Intelligence quotient scores of 4-year-old children: social-environmental risk factors.

Verbal IQ scores in a socially heterogeneous sample of 215 4-year-old children were highly related to a cumulative environmental risk index composed of maternal, family and cultural variables. Different combinations of equal numbers of risk factors produced similar effects on IQ, providing evidence that no single factor identified here uniquely enhances or limits early intellectual achievement and that cumulative effects from multiple risk factors increase the probability that development will be compromised. The multiple risk index predicted substantially more variance in the outcome measure than did any single risk factor alone, including socioeconomic status. High-risk children were more than 24 times as likely to have IQs below 85 than low-risk children.

Behavioral assessment of lead intoxication in children.

Current questions about lead exposure focus on the consequences of levels too low to have erupted into blatantly discernible defects. The present paper addresses two sets of interrelated problems derived from this issue. One is how to define the behavioral consequences of asymptomatic lead absorption, and the second focuses on behavioral assessment procedures. Current primary prevention programs emphasize environmental monitoring, and early detection programs emphasize lead body burden measurements. The evaluation of behavioral problems in school children as a function of body burden is rarely performed. Epidemiologic data indicate sufficient natural variability to determine the degree of association between indices of total body burden and behavior. Assessment procedures are described and research suggestions offered that sample concretely defined target behaviors in social environments.

Early indicators of developmental risk: Rochester Longitudinal Study.

Early indicators of schizophrenic outcomes were sought in a group of children of chronically ill schizophrenic women. A sample of pregnant women with varying degrees of mental illness were examined during the perinatal period and recruited into a 4-year longitudinal evaluation, which included cognitive, psychomotor, social, and emotional assessments at birth, 4, 12, 30, and 48 months of age. The mothers varied on mental health dimensions of diagnosis, severity of symptomatology, and chronicity of illness. Other factors included in the analyses were socioeconomic status (SES), race, sex of child, and family size. Hypotheses were tested to determine the relative impact of three sets of variables on the child's behavior: (1) specific maternal psychiatric diagnosis, (2) severity and chronicity of disturbance independent of diagnosis, and (3) general social status. We found that a specific maternal diagnosis of schizophrenia had the least impact. Neurotic-depressive mothers produced worse development in their children than schizophrenic or personality-disordered mothers. Both social status and severity/chronicity of illness showed a greater impact on development. Children of more severely or chronically ill mothers and lower-SES black children performed most poorly. These results do not support etiological models based on simple biological or environmental transmission of schizophrenia. The role of social and family environmental factors in predicting child cognitive and social-emotional competence was further evaluated using a multiple risk index. Children with high multiple environmental risk scores had much worse outcomes than children with low multiple risk scores.

Determinants of adolescent identity development: a cross-sequential study of boarding school boys.

A sociometric measure of identity status was developed based on Marcia's (1966) four ordinal levels of ego identity achievement: Identity Achievement, Moratorium, Foreclosure, and Diffusion. Boarding school adolescent boys (N = 197) rated their dormitory mates on each dimension twice with an interval of six months. Results indicate age differences in identity status for young adolescents, identity development associated with time, and a strong relation between adolescent behavior problems and levels of identity status. Efforts to relate identity status to child-rearing values, social problem-solving, stress, health concerns, and independence were inconclusive.

Defining environmental risk: multiple dimensions of psychological vulnerability.

Children participating in a longitudinal study of risk for serious mental disorder were assessed at 48 months of age. Six risk factors were defined: negative life events, e.g., illness/injury to the child; maternal hospitalizations, for all reasons; number of children in the family; maternal psychiatric status; maternal cognitive orientation toward child-rearing; and single-parent family. The results show that the number of risk factors is negatively related to social and intellectual adjustment; a rigid conforming maternal cognitive orientation is associated with diminished intellectual and social performance; maternal psychiatric status is associated with lessened social performance. Additionally, the combination of a rigid conforming maternal cognitive orientation with negative life events is associated with diminished social adjustment. A discussion examines these results in a context defined by developmental and crisis theory.