Family size,birth order,and intelligence in a large South American sample

The confluence theory, which hypothesizes a relationship between intellectual development birth order, and family size, was examined in a colombian study of more than 36,000 college applicants. The results of the study did not support the confluence theory. The confluence theory states that the intellectual development of a child is related to average mental age of the members of his family at the time of his birth. The mental age of the parents is always assigned a value of 30 and siblings are given scores equivalent to their chronological age at the birth of the subject. Therefore, the average mental age of family members for a 1st born child is 30, or 60 divided by 2. If a subject is born into a family consisting of 2 parents and a 6-year old sibling, the average mental age of family members tends, therefore, to decrease with each birth order. The hypothesis derived from the confluence theory states that there is a positive relationship between average mental age of a subject's family and the subject's performance on intelligence tests. In the Colombian study, data on family size, birth order and socioeconomic status was derived from college application forms. Intelligence test scores for each subject was obtained from college entrance exams. The mental age of each applicant's family at the time of the applicant's birth was calculated. Multiple correlation analysis and path analysis were used to assess the relationship. Results were 1) the test scores of subjects from families with 2,3,4, and 5 children were higher than test scores of the 1st born subjects; 2) the rank order of intelligence by family size was 3,4,5,2,6,1 instead of the hypothesized 1,2,3,4,5,6; and 3) only 1% of the variability in test scores was explained by the variables of birth order and family size. Further analysis indicated that socioeconomic status was a far more powerful explanatory variable than family size.     

The Contribution of Neighborhood and Family Income to Developmental Test Scores over the First Three Years of Life

The effects of neighborhood and family income and family risk factors on developmental test scores at ages 1 through 3 are examined using a subsample (N = 347) from the Infant Health and Development Program. Beneficial effects of low numbers of risks were found for scores at ages 1 through 3. Family poverty was associated with lower scores at ages 2 and 3. Neighborhood affluence was associated with higher scores at age 3. The family risks-test score association at ages 1 through 3 and family income-test score association at ages 2 and 3 were mediated by home environment. Mediated effects were stronger for family income-test score associations at age 3 than for neighborhood income. Moderating effects of family risk on family and neighborhood income effects revealed an interaction between family poverty and risks for scores at age 3. Explanations for the early links between family risks and test scores and the later links between income and test scores are discussed.     

The socioemotional development of orphans in orphanages and traditional foster care in Iraqi Kurdistan

In order to investigate orphans' situation and development in Iraqi Kurdistan, samples from the two available orphan care systems, the traditional foster care and the modern orphanages, are examined at an index test and at 1-year follow-up regarding competency scores and behavioral problems at both test occasions, and post-traumatic stress reactions at a 1-year follow-up. Achenbach Child Behavior Check List (CBCL) and two instruments regarding post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were used. While competency scores showed an improvement in both samples at the follow-up test, the problem scores increased in the orphanage sample and decreased among the foster care subjects. Moreover, the orphanage sample reported higher frequency of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than the foster care children. The results are discussed with regard to the value of the Kurdish society's own traditions in taking care of orphans.     

Early child care experiences and their association with family and child characteristics during middle childhood

Long-term correlates of early child care and maternal employment were examined in a representative sample of 333 6- to 12-year-old middle-class children. Intellectual, social, and behavioral development and parent-child relationships were related to nonparental infant care, center or preschool experiences, and maternal employment. Contextual analyses included child, parent, and family covariates related to choice of child care and children's development. Preschool and center day care was associated with slightly higher Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) Vocabulary scores and externalizing t scores on the Child Behavior Checklist. In addition, for African American children, center preschool experience was associated with 10-point-higher verbal intelligence scores and better ratings of positive behavioral attributes by parent and observers. Nonparental care during infancy and maternal employment patterns during the preschool years were not consistently related to the outcomes. The results of this study further support the growing consensus that the effects of early child care experiences must be considered in the context of parent, family, and child characteristics.     

The intellectual profile of abused and neglected children in the Philippines: An analysis of SB5 IQ scores of sexually abused,physically abused and neglected children

Child abuse and neglect have been associated with cognitive deficits, among other effects on child development. This study explores the prediction that child abuse and neglect has an impact on Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales 5th Edition (SB5) IQ scores, in relation to gender, age and type of abuse experienced. 300 children with experiences of abuse and neglect were included in the study, comprising 100 sexually abused, 100 physically abused and 100 neglected children. Overall, all scores on the SB5 were found to be significantly lower than the minimum average scores on the test. Verbal IQ (VIQ) scores were likewise found to be significantly lower than Nonverbal IQ (NVIQ) scores. Full Scale IQ (FSIQ) scores did not reveal heterogeneity when gender was factored in. Age and type of abuse (with a moderate effect size) on the other hand, showed significant differences among groups. Statistical analyses of SB5 Factor Index Scores revealed that abused children, in general, have significantly higher Visual-Spatial Processing (VS) and Quantitative Reasoning (QR) scores and lower scores in Knowledge (KN). There was a large effect size found in such an analysis. Age (with a large effect size), gender and type of abuse (with moderate effect sizes) give significant variations to this obtained profile.     

Black-white achievement gap and family wealth.

This article examines the extent to which family wealth affects the Black-White test score gap for young children based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (aged 3-12). This study found little evidence that wealth mediated the Black-White test scores gaps, which were eliminated when child and family demographic covariates were held constant. However, family wealth had a stronger association with cognitive achievement of school-aged children than that of preschoolers and a stronger association with school-aged children's math than on their reading scores. Liquid assets, particularly holdings in stocks or mutual funds, were positively associated with school-aged children's test scores. Family wealth was associated with a higher quality home environment, better parenting behavior, and children's private school attendance.     

Black–White Achievement Gap and Family Wealth

This article examines the extent to which family wealth affects the Black–White test score gap for young children based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (aged 3–12). This study found little evidence that wealth mediated the Black–White test scores gaps, which were eliminated when child and family demographic covariates were held constant. However, family wealth had a stronger association with cognitive achievement of school-aged children than that of preschoolers and a stronger association with school-aged children's math than on their reading scores. Liquid assets, particularly holdings in stocks or mutual funds, were positively associated with school-aged children's test scores. Family wealth was associated with a higher quality home environment, better parenting behavior, and children's private school attendance.     

Evaluating Non-Cognitive Skills among Students Switching Into and Out of Charter Schools in North Carolina

Despite several charter schools specifically targeting improving students’ noncognitive skills, the majority of charter school literature focuses on cognitive learning outcomes. Using behavioral measures as proxies for noncognitive outcomes, I find that North Carolina charter schools have no effect on tardiness or unexcused absences but are slightly improving total absences, suspensions, and disciplinary infractions. These positive results were driven primarily by charter schools that had been operating for at least five years. My results suggest that charter schools should be evaluated on a wider selection of outcomes than just standardized test scores.     

Variations in early child care: Do they predict subsequent social, emotional, and cognitive differences?

A sample of 236 predominantly middle class 8-year-olds from a state with minimal child care standards were examined for possible differences associated with earlier child care histories. In comparison to children in part-time child care (less than 30 hours a week) or exclusive maternal care, children with more extensive child care experiences since infancy were rated by teachers and parents as having more poor peer relationships, work habits, and emotional health, and as being more difficult to discipline. In this minimal standard environment, extensive infant care was also associated with more negative nominations from classmates, poorer academic and conduct report card grades, and lower standardized test scores. In stepwise regressions that included family social class, parents' marital status, family size, number of family moves, child gender, childbirth order, and current after school care, children's extensive experience in infant care was the single best predictor (in a negative direction) of ratings by parents, teachers, and peers, and of report card grades and standardized test scores. Child care history continued to be a significant negative predictor of child outcomes in full regression models that incorporated child and family variables. These results are in marked contrast with Andersson's (1989) findings of positive social and cognitive development associated with early, extensive child care in Sweden (a country characterized by high child care standards and opportunities for paid parental leave during early infancy).     

Kinship and Nonrelative Foster Care: The Effect of Placement Type on Child Well‐Being

This study uses a national sample of 1,215 children, ages 6–17, who spent some time in formal kinship or nonrelative foster care to identify the effect of placement type on academic achievement, behavior, and health. Several identification strategies are used to reduce selection bias, including ordinary least squares, change score models, propensity score weighting, and instrumental variables regression. The results consistently estimate a negative effect of kin placements on reading scores, but kin placements appear to have no effect on child health, and findings on children's math and cognitive skills test scores and behavioral problems are mixed. Estimated declines in both academic achievement and behavioral problems are concentrated among children who are lower functioning at baseline.     

University class size: Is smaller better?

This study investigates the relationship between class size and achievement at the college level. Recent meta-analyses have found a strong relationship between class size and student achievement, but few of the studies examined class size larger than 40 or university-age populations. This analysis examines a university's testing-center data-archives representing 305 sections from 24 different courses. Section sizes ranged from 13 to 1,006. A total of 16,230 test scores were analyzed. The results of this investigation reveal that at the college level, class size may be less important an influence on student achievement than some educators have thought.     

Psychological adjustment and family functioning of boys with learning disabilities

This study examined parent reports of behavioral and family functioning for 59 boys with learning disabilities (LD) and 65 nondisabled boys (NLD) of ages 6 to 12 years. Parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scale (FACES III). Boys with LD were reported as having significantly more behavior problems of both the Internalizing and Externalizing types than NLD boys. Individual scales yielded group differences indicating higher scores (more problems) for the group with LD on the Hyperactive, Schizoid or Anxious, Depressed, and Obsessive Compulsive scales, but no differences on the Aggressive or Social Withdrawal scales. Furthermore, families of boys with LD tended to score more frequently in the extreme (disturbed) range of family functioning. However, boys of families in the extreme range did not have more behavior problems than the boys of other families. The findings suggest that a greater than average proportion of boys with LD are at risk for developing psychological adjustment problems.     

Environmental influences on vocational interest development in adolescents from adoptive and biological families.

Family influences on vocational interest development were studied by hypothesizing that parents with similar interests are more likely to have adolescents who also develop those interests than are parents whose interests are very divergent. In order to unconfound genetic and environmental influences, the 844 parents and adolescent children in 114 biologically related and 101 adoptive families completed the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory. Parent-child interest difference scores were regressed on parent-parent difference scores (PPDIF), a dummy variable for family type, and the interaction between family type and PPDIF. For all parent-child pairs except mother-son, greater PPDIF scores predicted greater parent-child difference scores (indicating influence of family environment), and there was no family type X PPDIF interaction (indicating that the environmental influence was operating in both biological and adoptive families). Evidence of genetic variance in interest sytyes was also confirmed.     

Birth order, family configuration, and verbal achievement

Two samples of National Merit Scholarship participants test in 1962 and the entire population of almost 800,000 participants tested in 1965 were examined. Consistent effects in all 3 groups were observed with respect to both birth order and family size (1st born and those of smaller families scored higher). Control of both socioeconomic variables and maternal age, by analysis of variance as well as by analysis of covariance, failed to alter the relationships. Stepdown analyses suggested that the effects were due to a verbal component and that no differences were attributable to nonverbal factors. Mean test scores were computed for detailed sibship configurations based on birth order, family size, sibling spacing, and sibling sex.     

Do gains in test scores explain labor market outcomes?

Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, this article investigates whether students who made relatively large test score gains during high school had larger earnings 7 years after high school compared to students whose scores improved little. In models that control for pre-high school test scores, family background, and demographic characteristics, employed women who gain one standard deviation more than average are predicted to earn 9 percent more than average. These effects are even larger unconditional on employment status, indicating that test score gains influence both the employment status and earnings once employed. For men, however, test score gains are not significantly related to employment status or earnings, except for those men who have low initial test scores.     

Parents’ reading history as an indicator of risk for reading difficulties

Children from families whose members have reading impairments are found to be poorer performers, take less advantage of instruction, and require more time to reach the reading level of children whose relatives are good readers. As a family’s reading history may not be available, a self-report of reading abilities is used to identify children’s background. In this paper, we explored the contribution of phonological, literacy, and linguistic abilities and reported parental reading abilities to predict reading achievement at the end of the school year in a Spanish sample. Children who were starting to read were assessed in a variety of oral language, phonological, and literacy tasks at the beginning and end of the school year. Parents filled out a self-report questionnaire about their reading abilities. Their answers were used to assign children to good or poor reader parent groups (GRP vs PRP). A logistic and ROC analysis were used to assess the variables’ discriminative capability, considering literacy scores at the end of the year as a measure of reading achievement. GRP children obtained higher scores than PRP children did. Performance on tasks of rapid naming assessment (RAN) letters (78.6%), Word Reading (75.7%), and Deletion (75.6%) were the most accurate predictors of children’s reading achievement. IPRA showed slightly lower accuracy (73.8) than did the behavioral measures and as high specificity as RAN letters (96.2%), similarly to the percentages found in previous studies. Although behavioral measures were shown as the best predictors, parents’ self-reports could also provide a quick estimation of family risk of difficulties in literacy acquisition.     

The effect of personality traits on subject choice and performance in high school: Evidence from an English cohort

This paper investigates the relationship between personality traits in adolescence and performance in high school using a large and recent cohort study. In particular, we investigate the impact of locus of control, self-esteem, and work ethics at age 15, on test scores at age 16, and on subject choices and subsequent performance at age 17–18. In particular, individuals with external locus of control or with low levels of self-esteem seem less likely to have good performance in test scores at age 16 and to pursue further studies at 17–18, especially in Mathematics or Science.We use matching methods to control for a rich set of adolescent and family characteristics and we find that personality traits do affect study choices and performance in test scores – particularly in Mathematics and Science. We explore the robustness of our results using the methodology proposed by Altonji, Elder, and Taber (2005) that consists of making hypotheses about the correlation between the unobservables that determine test scores and subjects’ choices and the unobservables that influence personality.     

Association between psychosocial stressors with emotional and behavioral problems among children of low-income addicted families living in Brazil

BackgroundChildren exposed to substance use in their families are vulnerable to multiple risk factors in their development and at increased risk for emotional and behavioral problems. The aims of the study were as follows 1) estimate the prevalence of emotional and behavioral problems among children aged 6–11 years old, living with addicted family members in a low-income urban community of São Paulo, Southeastern Brazil; 2) evaluate the children’s exposure to family psychosocial stressors and substance use; and 3) investigate the factors related to the increased risk of emotional and behavioral problems and substance use.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted among 101 children aged 6–11 years old (M = 9.16 years, SD = 1.61). The instruments used were a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and the Psychosocial Stress Factors (PSF).ResultsHigh prevalence of problems was found for this sample: the CBCL showed 26.7% of clinical scores for Internalizing Problems, 40.6% for Externalizing Problems, and 40.6% for Total Problems. Exposure to family psychosocial stressors was also high, including severe disease (33%), physical aggression (28.9%), death (27.8%), psychiatric hospitalization (16.7%), suicide attempts (15.5%), and suicide (9.3%). Exposure to these family stressors was associated with an increase of two to four times in the prevalence of internalizing and externalizing problems.ConclusionsChildren exposed to substance abusers have more mental health problems than general population, even when compared to peers living in similar low-income areas. This is a group that should be target of a selective preventive intervention.     

Stability of Intelligence from Preschool to Adolescence: The Influence of Social and Family Risk Factors

Intelligence scores of children in a longitudinal study were assessed at 4 and 13 years and related to social and family risk factors. A multiple environmental risk score was calculated for each child by counting the number of high-risk conditions from 10 risk factors: mother's behavior, mother's developmental beliefs, mother's anxiety, mother's mental health, mother's educational attainment, family social support, family size, major stressful life events, occupation of head of household, and disadvantaged minority status. Multiple risk scores explained one-third to one-half of IQ variance at 4 and 13 years. The stability between 4- and 13-year environmental risk scores ( r = .77) was not less than the stability between 4- and 13-year IQ scores ( r = .72). Effects remained after SES and race, or maternal IQ, were partialled; multiple risk was important in longitudinal prediction, even after prior measurement of child IQ was accounted for; the pattern of risk was less important than the total amount of risk present in the child's context.     

Newborn and preschool predictors of second-grade reading scores: an evaluation of categorical and continuous scores

This study examined how the development of foundation skills in speech perception, language, short-term memory, and family demographics and activities in the home environment influence the development of reading skills. Data from 96 children participating in a longitudinal research project were used. It was hypothesized that measures of specific foundation skills in the preschool period and measures of family demographics and home environment could be used to identify children's reading abilities. As expected, most of the foundation skills were found to be related to and predictive of reading scores. Event-related potential (ERP) measures of speech perception, which have previously been found to be predictive of reading abilities, and measures of family and home activities and language measures were related to reading scores. Verbal short-term memory scores contributed little to the prediction of reading scores. These variables influenced the results whether they were used to discriminate reading groups or to predict a continuum of reading scores, but there were large differences in the amount of variance accounted for. More variance was accounted for in the group analyses than in the continuum analyses.