Educational experiences of U.S. children during the 2020-2021 school year in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a historic event impacting children around the globe. Prior research on the educational experiences of children during the COVID-19 pandemic focused almost exclusively on spring 2020. This article extends this literature past the initial shock of spring 2020, capturing the first full school year (2020-2021) during the COVID-19 pandemic. This registered report study utilized a national sample of 1,666 United States twins in kindergarten through 12th grade from 43 states to provide the current descriptive report of children's educational experiences during this time, as reported by their parents. Specifically, we reported on school format, parents' role in education, parent-teacher interactions, schoolwork struggles, technology access, and school services. About half of children attended in-person schooling, with many children switching from online to in-person throughout the school year. Parents saw the pandemic as a risk to their children's education. During the 2020-2021 school year of the pandemic, parents felt they had a larger role in their children's education and were less satisfied in their interactions with teachers than what they experienced during the prepandemic part of the 2019-2020 school year. Children experienced more schoolwork struggles than they had in previous years, and this was similar across age groups. For most constructs, results were equivalent across age group, but parents of younger children tended to provide more schoolwork help. Overall, this article highlights the disruptions in their educational environments that children continued to experience through the first full school year (2020-2021) of the COVID-19 pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Demographic Factors, Medication Adherence, and Post-transplant Health Outcomes: A Longitudinal Multilevel Modeling Approach.

Few studies in pediatric solid organ transplantation have examined non-adherence to immunosuppressive medication over time and its associations with demographic factors and post-transplant outcomes including late acute rejection and hospitalizations. We examined longitudinal variation in patient Medication Level Variability Index (MLVI) adherence data from pediatric kidney, liver, and heart transplant recipients. Patient and administrative data from the United Network for Organ Sharing were linked with electronic health records and MLVI values for 332 patients. Multilevel mediation modeling indicated comparatively more variation in MLVI values between patients than within patients, longitudinally, over 10 years post transplant. MLVI values significantly predicted late acute rejection and hospitalization. MLVI partially mediated patient factors and post-transplant outcomes for patient age indicating adolescents may benefit most from intervention efforts. Results demonstrate the importance of longitudinal assessment of adherence and differences among patients. Efforts to promote medication adherence should be adapted to high-risk patients to increase likelihood of adherence.

Measuring CHAOS? Evaluating the short-form Confusion, Hubbub And Order Scale.

The Confusion, Hubbub and Order Scale (CHAOS) - short form - is a survey tool intended to capture information about home environments. It is widely used in studies of child and adolescent development and psychopathology, particularly twin studies. The original long form of the scale comprised 15 items and was validated in a sample of infants in the 1980s. The short form of the scale was developed in the late 1990s and contains six items, including four from the original scale, and two new items. This short form has not been validated and is the focus of this study. We use five samples drawn from twin studies in Australia, the UK, and the USA, and examine measurement invariance of the CHAOS short-form. We first compare alternate confirmatory factor models for each group; we next test between-group configural, metric and scalar invariance; finally, we examine predictive validity of the scale under different conditions. We find evidence that a two-factor configuration of the six items is more appropriate than the commonly used one-factor model. Second, we find measurement non-invariance across groups at the metric invariance step, with items performing differently depending on the sample. We also find inconsistent results in tests of predictive validity using family-level socioeconomic status and academic achievement as criterion variables. The results caution the continued use of the short-form CHAOS in its current form and recommend future revisions and development of the scale for use in developmental research.

The codevelopment of reading and attention from middle childhood to early adolescence: A multivariate latent growth curve study.

Attention skills are strong cross-sectional predictors of reading comprehension from childhood through to adolescence. However, less is known about the developmental relations between these two domains across this period. This study examined the codevelopment of reading and attention in a community sample of 614 Australian school students (50% female). Reading and attention were assessed at ages 8, 10, 12, and 14. Results of univariate latent growth models demonstrated, on average, curvilinear trajectories for reading in which rapid growth across younger age spans decelerates as children reach adolescence. By contrast, attention skills remained relatively stable on average. Significant negative correlations were observed between the intercept and slope factors in separate reading (r = -.62) and attention models (r = -.39) suggesting compensatory growth patterns in which poorer performing students in both domains at age 8 have steeper trajectories than their higher performing peers. A comparison of a multivariate latent growth model and an autoregressive latent trajectory model with structured residuals (ALT-SR) examined the interrelatedness of development in reading and attention. Both between-individual and within-individual cross-domain parameters showed reading and attention to be positively related at Grade 3, indicating an association between better attention and higher reading achievement at age 8. However, there was little evidence for interrelated growth across domains in this sample. The results contribute to theories which explain whether and how multiple cognitive domains codevelop over a substantial period of childhood and early adolescence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Differential Patterns of Growth in Reading and Math Skills during Elementary School.

This study investigated developmental trajectories of reading and math using latent-growth-curve analyses across multiple academic skills, measures, and multiple time periods within a single sample. Reading-related growth was marked by significant individual differences during the early elementary-school period and non-significant individual differences during the late elementary-school period. For math-related skills, non-significant individual differences were present for early math growth and significant individual differences were present in late elementary-school. No clear pattern of cumulative, compensatory, or stable development emerged for either reading-related or math skills. These differing growth patterns highlight developmental complexities and suggest domain-specific differences in achievement growth that are potentially associated with contextual factors.

Exploring the Associations Between Delayed School Entry and Achievement in Primary and Secondary School.

This research investigated whether delayed school entry was associated with higher achievement in national tests of reading and numeracy in Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9 (n = 2,823). Delayed entry was related to advantages in reading (0.14 SD) and numeracy (0.08 SD) at Grade 3, although little variance was explained (1%-2%). This slight advantage persisted for both domains in Grades 5 and 7, albeit with smaller effects. In Grade 9 there was no association between delayed entry and either reading or numeracy. Exploratory analyses with subsamples in each grade (n = 424-667) revealed no associations between delayed entry and achievement after controlling for inattention and hyperactivity, and negative associations between inattention and achievement in all grades in both domains (-0.33, -0.49 SD).

Exploring the Influence of Early Childhood Education and Care on the Etiology of Achievement.

The present study used a genetically-sensitive quantile regression approach to examine the relation between participation in early childhood education and care (ECEC) and subsequent school performance in literacy and numeracy at grades 3, 5, 7, and 9. The sample consisted of 1255 twin pairs (596 MZ; 659 DZ) with information on both ECEC and the National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) scores from the Twin Study of NAPLAN. Results indicated variation in heritability estimates across the distributions of achievement, suggesting that different patterns of etiological influences may exist among children of different ability levels. Additionally, the results provided no evidence that ECEC significantly influenced achievement, and in the genetically-sensitive analyses, no evidence that ECEC moderated the influences of heritability of achievement for typically advantaged children. These results suggest that ECEC may not provide the levels of environmental support for later achievement that advocates claim, although we acknowledge that ECEC quality, which was not measured in the current study, may make a difference in whether or not ECEC influences achievement.

The Academic Development Study of Australian Twins (ADSAT): Research Aims and Design.

The Academic Development Study of Australian Twins was established in 2012 with the purpose of investigating the relative influence of genes and environments in literacy and numeracy capabilities across two primary and two secondary school grades in Australia. It is the first longitudinal twin project of its kind in Australia and comprises a sample of 2762 twin pairs, 40 triplet sets and 1485 nontwin siblings. Measures include standardized literacy and numeracy test data collected at Grades 3, 5, 7 and 9 as part of the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy. A range of demographic and behavioral data was also collected, some at multiple longitudinal time points. This article outlines the background and rationale for the study and provides an overview for the research design, sample and measures collected. Findings emerging from the project and future directions are discussed.

Trait perspective taking and romantic relationship satisfaction: A meta-analysis.

This meta-analysis evaluated the association between trait perspective taking and romantic relationship satisfaction. The study synthesized the association in 20 separate samples in a total of 18 published and unpublished studies, involving a total of 4,678 participants. The studies were completed by many different research teams, using different samples, different measures, and various correlational research designs. The results showed a significant association between trait perspective taking and romantic relationship satisfaction (r = .21, 95% confidence intervals [.17, .25]). The results did not vary significantly with whether the respondents were men or women, whether they rated their own perspective taking or that of their partner, or whether the perspective taking assessed was general or specific to the partner. The findings provide a basis for future intervention studies that test whether increasing perspective taking has a positive effect on relationship satisfaction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

A Meta-Analytical Review of the Genetic and Environmental Correlations between Reading and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms and Reading and Math.

According to the Multiple Deficit Model, comorbidity results when the genetic and environmental risk factors that increase the liability for a disorder are domain-general. In order to explore the role of domain-general etiological risk factors in the co-occurrence of learning-related difficulties, the current meta-analysis compiled 38 studies of third through ninth-grade children to estimate the average genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental correlations between reading and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, and reading and math, as well as their potential moderators. Results revealed average genetic, shared and nonshared environmental correlations between reading and ADHD symptoms of .42, .64, and .20, and reading and math of .71, .90, and .56, suggesting that reading and math may have more domain-general risk factors than reading and ADHD symptoms. A number of significant sources of heterogeneity were also found and discussed. These results have important implications for both intervention and classification of learning disabilities.

Comment on Asbury and Wai (2019), "Viewing education policy through a genetic lens," Journal of School Choice.

Asbury and Wai (Journal of School Choice, 2019) perform a valuable service by summarizing much available behavior--genetic research on academic achievement. However they consider that no specific policies stem from the research body at this time. Here we do propose a policy based on some of our research using twins, namely that available funding for students struggling with learning to read be targeted to them individually rather than allocated to schools per se. We briefly canvass some practical issues, such as the variety of funding mechanisms, best-practice intervention techniques, and identification of struggling readers. We also outline a general research strategy for uncovering factors contributing to educational attainment that takes behavior-genetic research as its starting point and drills down from there, and advocate including genetically-sensitive methods in a growing list of quantitative research techniques in education.

Differential Influences of Genes and Environment Across the Distribution of Reading Ability.

We partitioned early childhood reading into genetic and environmental sources of variance and examined the full distribution of ability levels from low through normal to high as computed by quantile regression. The full sample comprised twin pairs measured at preschool (n = 977), kindergarten (n = 1028), grade 1 (n = 999), and grade 2 (n = 1000). Quantile regression analyses of the full distribution of literacy ability showed genetic influence in all grades from preschool to grade 2. At preschool, the low end of the distribution had higher genetic influence than the high end of the distribution and the shared environment influence was the opposite. These shared environment influences of preschool became insignificant with formal schooling. This suggests that higher scores in pre-literacy skills (preschool) are more influenced by shared environment factors, though these are short-lived. This study discusses the factors that may be influencing the results.

Factor structure and aetiological architecture of the BRIEF: A twin study.

Executive function is a broad construct that encompasses various processes involved in goal-directed behaviour in non-routine situations (Banich, 2009). The present study uses a sample of 560 5- to 16-year-old twin pairs (M = 11.14, SD = 2.53): 219 monozygotic twin pairs (114 female; 105 male) and 341 dizygotic twin pairs (136 female, 107 male; 98 opposite sex) to extend prior literature by providing information about the factor structure and the genetic and environmental architecture of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF; Gioia et al., 2000, Child Neuropsychol., 6, 235; Gioia et al., 2000, Behavior rating inventory of executive function, Lutz, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources), a multifaceted rating scale of everyday executive functions. Phenotypic results revealed a 9-scale, 3-factor model best represents the BRIEF structure within the current sample. Results of the genetically sensitive analyses indicated the presence of rater bias/contrast effects for the Initiate, Working Memory, and Task-Monitor scales. Additive genetic and non-shared environmental influences were present for the Initiate, Plan/Organize, Organization of Materials, Shift, and Monitor and Self-Monitor scales. Influences on Emotional Control were solely environmental. Interestingly, the aetiological architecture observed was similar to that of performance-based measures of executive function. This observed similarity provided additional evidence for the usefulness of the BRIEF as a measure of 'everyday' executive function.

Cross-Study Differences in the Etiology of Reading Comprehension: a Meta-Analytical Review of Twin Studies.

Numerous twin studies have examined the genetic and environmental etiology of reading comprehension, though it is likely that etiological estimates are influenced by unidentified sample conditions (e.g. Tucker-Drob and Bates, Psychol Sci:0956797615612727, 2015). The purpose of this meta-analysis was to average the etiological influences of reading comprehension and to explore the potential moderators influencing these estimates. Results revealed an average heritability estimate of h2 = 0.59, with significant variation in estimates across studies, suggesting potential moderation. Moderation results indicated publication year, grade level, project, zygosity methods, and response type moderated heritability estimates. The average shared environmental estimate was c2 = 0.16, with publication year, grade and zygosity methods acting as significant moderators. These findings support the role of genetics on reading comprehension, and a small significant role of shared environmental influences. The results suggest that our interpretation of how genes and environments influence reading comprehension should reflect aspects of study and sample.

Exploring the Co-Development of Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension: A Twin Study.

This study explores the co-development of two related but separate reading skills, reading fluency and reading comprehension, across Grades 1-4. A bivariate biometric dual change score model was applied to longitudinal data collected from 1,784 twin pairs between the ages of 6 and 10 years. Grade 1 skills were influenced by highly overlapping genetic and environmental factors. Growth in both skills was influenced by highly overlapping shared environmental factors. Cross-lagged parameters indicated bidirectional effects, with stronger effects from fluency to comprehension change than from comprehension to fluency change.

Examining the genetic and environmental associations among spelling, reading fluency, reading comprehension and a high stakes reading test in a combined sample of third and fourth grade students.

The present study is an examination of the genetic and environmental effects on the associations among reading fluency, spelling and earlier reading comprehension on a later reading comprehension outcome (FCAT) in a combined sample of 3rd and 4th grade students using data from the 2011-2012 school year of the Florida Twin project on Reading (Taylor et al., 2013). A genetically sensitive model was applied to the data with results indicating a common genetic component among all four measures, along with shared and non-shared environmental influences common between reading fluency, spelling and FCAT.

Examining Associations Among ADHD, Homework Behavior, and Reading Comprehension: A Twin Study.

Previous literature has indicated an important association between reading comprehension and both attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and homework habits. This investigation sought to extend previous knowledge by providing information about how ADHD and homework behavior (i.e., completing homework regularly) may jointly influence reading comprehension. Using a genetically sensitive design, this study examined the genetic and environmental influences on and between ADHD, homework behavior and reading comprehension. Participants for this study included 691 twin pairs (351 monozygotic, 340 same-sex dizygotic) from the Florida Twin Project on Behavior and Environment (FTP-BE) and 2647 twin pairs (865 monozygotic, 1782 dizygotic) from the larger Florida Twin Project on Reading (FTP-R) in Grades 3 through 7. Three separate models, each representing a different definition of ADHD (full ADHD, inattention only, and hyperactivity/impulsivity only), showed similar patterns of results; therefore, results of the full ADHD model are discussed. Overlapping genetic influences were found between ADHD, homework behavior, and reading comprehension, but no shared environmental influences among all three. However, shared environmental influences overlapped between homework behavior and reading comprehension. Although the sources of this environmental overlap are unknown, these results have implications for improving homework practices and their subsequent influence on literacy skills through homework environments.

Test anxiety and a high-stakes standardized reading comprehension test: A behavioral genetics perspective.

Past research suggests that reading comprehension test performance does not rely solely on targeted cognitive processes such as word reading, but also on other non-target aspects such as test anxiety. Using a genetically sensitive design, we sought to understand the genetic and environmental etiology of the association between test anxiety and reading comprehension as measured by a high-stakes test. Mirroring the behavioral literature of test anxiety, three different dimensions of test anxiety were examined in relation to reading comprehension, namely intrusive thoughts, autonomic reactions, and off-task behaviors. Participants included 426 sets of twins from the Florida Twin Project on Reading. The results indicated test anxiety was negatively associated with reading comprehension test performance, specifically through common shared environmental influences. The significant contribution of test anxiety to reading comprehension on a high-stakes test supports the notion that non-targeted factors may be interfering with accurately assessing students' reading abilities.