Genetic and Environmental Influences on Negative Life Events From Late Childhood to Adolescence

This multiwave longitudinal study tested two quantitative genetic developmental models to examine genetic and environmental influences on exposure to negative dependent and independent life events. Participants (N = 457 twin pairs) completed measures of life events annually from ages 9 to 16. The same genetic factors influenced exposure to dependent events across time and increased in magnitude during the transition to adolescence. Independent events were less genetically influenced than dependent events in boys, but not girls. Shared environmental influences decreased in magnitude as youth transitioned into adolescence. Nonshared environmental influences were mostly age specific and contributed significantly to both types of events at all ages. Results provide theoretical implications for developmental risk pathways to stress exposure and stress‐related psychopathology.     

Down Syndrome Temperament: The Stereotype at Middle Childhood and Adolescence

MOTHERS AND TEACHERS of 94 children (53 boys) with Down syndrome, between 8 and 14 years of age, rated the children on a temperament scale and provided an overall impression as to whether the child was difficult in comparison with other children. Maternal ratings on the Middle Childhood Questionnaire showed significant differences from standardization scores. Children with Down syndrome were given ratings as less active, more predictable, of more positive mood, less persistent, and more distractible. Some of these dimensions favour the amiable personality stereotype for the syndrome but low persistence was associated with maternal impressions of difficulty. There was little agreement between mothers and teachers regarding the individual children who were rated as being significantly easier or more difficult than other children. Results with a subgroup (n = 32) showed that externalizing behaviours were significantly related to both mother and teacher impressions of difficulty and that mothers also found intense, active, distractible behaviour difficult.     

Coping Socialization in Middle Childhood: Tests of Maternal and Paternal Influences

A theoretical model of parental socialization of children's coping behavior is described and tested with 310 elementary school children ( M age = 10.5 years). Mothers and fathers reported on the coping suggestions they made to their children, their own coping strategies, and their perceptions of the family environment. Children reported on their relationships with their parents and on their usual coping behavior. Children's coping efforts were associated with family environment, the quality of the parent-child relationship, parent's own coping, and parent coping suggestions, though these relationships differed by gender and were quite specific. Maternal data were more strongly associated with children's coping than paternal data, and active and support coping were predicted more successfully than avoidance strategies. Analyses supported a model of direct, rather than mediated, effects on children's coping. There was modest support for the interactive effects of maternal coaching and modeling on girls' active coping and boys' avoidant coping.     

Reading Development in Young Children: Genetic and Environmental Influences

The development of reading skills in typical students is commonly described as a rapid growth across early grades of active reading education, with a slowing down of growth as active instruction tapers. This study examined the extent to which genetics and environments influence these growth rates. Participants were 371 twin pairs, aged approximately 6 through 12, from the Western Reserve Reading Project. Development of word‐level reading, reading comprehension, and rapid naming was examined using genetically sensitive latent quadratic growth curve modeling. Results confirmed the developmental trajectory described in the phenotypic literature. Furthermore, the same shared environmental influences were related to early reading skills and subsequent growth, but genetic influences on these factors were unique.     

Dimensions of Subjectivity in Parents'' Ratings of Infant Temperament

This study was designed to further define the subjective component in parental reports of infant temperament. 131 mothers and 127 fathers completed the ICQ twice during pregnancy and at 3.5 months postpartum. In addition, motivation for the pregnancy was assessed early in pregnancy, and depression and anxiety were measured at each point in the study. Principal components analyses of the data collected during pregnancy yielded anxiety/depression and pregnancy motivation components for both mothers and fathers. The ICQ scores formed 2 components in the mothers' analysis and 1 in the fathers'. Subsequent correlation and regression analyses examining the relation between the pregnancy components and the postpartum scores revealed that the best predictors of postpartum ICQ scores were the postpartum ICQ components, although the anxiety/depression component was also a significant correlate. The results are discussed in terms of the role parents' prepartum expectancies might play in their perceptions of and interactions with their infants.     

Genetic Influences on Perceptions of Childhood Family Environment: A Reared Apart Twin Study

This study estimates the extent to which heredity influences perceptions of childhood family environment in a sample of 58 monozygotic and 46 dizygotic pairs of adult twins who were reared apart. The measures used to assess family environments were the Family Environment Scale (FES) and Block Environmental Questionnaire (BEQ). A principal component factor analysis with a VARIMAX rotation of the FES and BEQ yielded 2 major factors—Support, and Organization and Cultural Orientation. Single and multiple indicator model-fitting techniques were applied to the reared apart twin data on the 2 factors. Perceived support in childhood family environments was fitted best by a model incorporating additive genetic and unshared environmental factors. Perceived organization was fitted most adequately by a model which includes only unshared environmental factors. Maximum-likelihood estimates of heritability from model-fitting analyses suggest that genetic factors explain 44% of the variance of perceptions of support dimension in childhood family environments.     

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Vocabulary IQ: Parental Education Level as Moderator

This article examines how parental education level moderates the genetic and environmental contributions to variation in verbal IQ. Data are from 1909 non-Hispanic Whites and African American sibling pairs from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which obtained nationally-based samples of identical (MZ) twins, fraternal (DZ) twins, full and half siblings, cousins (in the same household), and biologically unrelated siblings. In the whole sample, the variance estimate for heritability (h2 = .57, SE = .08) was greater than that for shared environment (c2 = .13, SE = .04). Both heritability and the shared environmental estimate were moderated, however, by level of parental education. Specifically, among more highly educated families, the average h2 = .74 (SE = .10) and the average c2 = .00 (SE = .05). Conversely, among less well-educated families, heritability decreased and shared environmental influences increased, yielding similar proportions of variance explained by genetic and environmental factors, average h2 = .26 (SE = .15), and average c2 = .23 (SE = .07).     

Effect of Teacher Involvement and Teacher Self-Efficacy on Ratings of Consultant Effectiveness and Intervention Acceptability

From a pool of 102 elementary school teachers, 30 teachers scoring highest on a measure of personal teaching efficacy and 30 teachers scoring lowest on personal teaching efficacy were randomly assigned to view one of two videotapes of consultation. The two videotapes were identical, with the exception of the teacher's involvement in making decisions at each of three decision points in consultation: identifying the problem, selecting an assessment procedure, and selecting an intervention plan. After viewing the tape, teachers rated the consultant's effectiveness and the intervention's acceptability. Teachers with high personal teaching efficacy rated the consultant as more effective and the intervention as more acceptable. No main effect for level of involvement or hypothesized interaction effect was found. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Understanding Genetic and Environmental Influences on the Development of Reading: Reaching for Higher Fruit

The transition from first-generation to second-generation studies of genetic and environmental influences on the development of reading is underway. The first generation of quantitative genetic studies yielded an extraordinary conclusion: Fifty percent or more of the variance in most constructs, including reading, is attributable to genetic variation. The first generation of molecular genetic studies produced methods for analysis of effects of genetic variation at the molecular level and some tantalizing preliminary results identifying reading-related chromosomal regions. The articles in this special issue provide examples of a second generation of studies that go well beyond heritability estimates and preliminary results. The weak link in the chain for both quantitative and molecular genetic studies remains an uncertain phenotype.     

Teacher and Student Teacher Ratings of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Three Cultural Settings

Since the criteria for diagnosis of childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) include that the symptoms present in at least two situations, usually home and school, the role of teachers in the identification and diagnosis of this condition is crucial. There is, however, evidence of inter-cultural differences in ratings of AD/HD in children and young people, by teachers and others, though it is not possible to make comparisons between the various studies, because the conditions were not comparable. The focus of this article is the cultural influences on ratings of AD/HD-type behaviour. Evidence is presented of culturally related differences in such ratings, under conditions designed to ensure directly comparable conditions, involving teachers and student teachers from mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom. There was some evidence that the teachers from mainland China rated the behaviour of a "target" child, presented on video, higher on a number of items than either the teachers from Hong Kong or the United Kingdom. There was only limited evidence of differences between the ratings of teachers and student teachers within the same culture.     

Choice of Reading Comprehension Test Influences the Outcomes of Genetic Analyses

Vowel representations are particularly difficult for children to learn because most vowel phonemes can be spelled in several different ways. Children in Grades 1, 2, and 3 spelled nonwords with an ambiguous vowel and reported their spelling strategies. Analysis of the children's spellings and strategy reports revealed a shift in relying solely on phonological information to considering orthographic information for making vowel letter choices. Implications for vowel spelling development are discussed.     

Comparison of Teacher and Student Ratings of Microcomputer Software

No abstract available for this article.     

Innovations in Early Childhood Teacher Education: Reflections on Practice

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the instruction in a teacher education science content course that applied the theories that underlie cognitive constructivism. The methods used aimed to develop positive dispositions toward teaching practices that encourage exploration, collaboration, and individual student responsibility. Nurturing a love of science and an excitement towards learning through discovery were also goals. The theories spanned intersubjectivity and scaffolding from Vygotsky, individual responsibility for learning, and assimilation and accommodation of ideas to allow for individual construction of knowledge from Piaget. Project work, suggested by Katz and Chard, was also included, as were application of the experiential social construction of knowledge theories of Dewey and multiple intelligences from Gardner. Modeling the application of the theories behind cognitive constructivism fostered students’understanding of their appropriate use in elementary classrooms.     

The Genetic‐Environmental Influences on Individual Cognitive Functioning or IQ

While some researchers place greater emphasis on heredity causes of individual differences in cognitive functioning, others place greater emphasis on cultural and environmental factors (broadly defined). Still others place greater stress on the dynamic interrelationship between the genetic components and the environmental components in accounting for individual cognitive functioning. The paper examines these views and concludes that intelligence is far more complex than hereditarians would admit and that although we may go along with the view that heredity could set the limit to cognitive development, it is not possible to tell what this limit is, if we define intelligence as a multifaCEDSd, multicausal phenomenon, which is partially malleable and capable of expression in many diverse ways.     

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Inattention,Hyperactivity-Impulsivity,and Reading: Kindergarten to Grade 2

Twin children from Australia, Scandinavia, and the United States were assessed for inattention, hyperactivity-impulsivity, and reading across the first 3 school years. Univariate behavior-genetic analyses indicated substantial heritability for all three variables in all years. Longitudinal analyses showed one genetic source operating across the time span and a second entering in the second school year for each variable, though possibly not reliable for inattention. Other analyses confirmed previous findings of pleiotropy (shared genes) between inattention and reading and showed that this genetic overlap is in place from kindergarten onwards and is restricted to one of the genetic sources that affect reading and inattention. The results extend previous conclusions about the developmental trajectories of inattention, hyperactivity-impulsivity, and reading and their relationships. Limitations of this study are discussed, as are educational implications.     

Global Influences on Teacher Education in Scotland

This comment is addressed to the recent debate between McLeish and Gibson concerning the former's schedule‐based classroom observations. McLeish is accused of proliferating category systems unnecessarily and of failing to document his own system adequately. While some of Gibson's criticisms are endorsed, therefore, it is also suggested that his approach is unwarrantably anti‐theoretical.     

Children's Temperament and Behavior in Montessori and Constructivist Early Childhood Programs

This study tested the hypothesis that curriculum type (Montessori and constructivist) moderates the impact of temperament (specifically activity level and attention-span/persistence) on the classroom behavior of 3- to 5-year-old children. Mothers enrolled in Montessori and constructivist preschools filled out the Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory. The children's teachers filled out the Preschool Behavior Questionnaire and the Preschool Adjustment Questionnaire. A near-significant trend suggested that temperamentally active boys were more likely to be perceived by their teachers as having behavior problems if they were enrolled in Montessori programs than if they were enrolled in constructivist programs. There was no such trend for girls. There was no evidence that temperamental attention-span persistence moderated the impact of curriculum type on either boys' or girls' behavior. The findings thus give modest support to the notion that parents should be advised to select constructivist early childhood programs especially for boys who are temperamentally predisposed to be highly modifying their teaching practices to better accommodate the needs of these children active. In addition, directors and teachers in Montessori programs may consider modifying their teaching practices to better accommodate the needs of these children.     

Australian Early Childhood Teacher Education: Developments and Concerns

The history of early childhood teacher education in Australia dates back to 1897 with the establishment of the Kindergarten Union Teachers' Training College in Sydney. Since the 1970's, small, specialized, private teachers' colleges in each state have emerged to become part of the national government system of Colleges of Advanced Education (CAE's). These institutions had as a primary goal to teach rather than to conduct research about teaching. CAE's have historically been primarily responsible for vocationally-oriented professional courses of study such as nursing, teaching, social welfare, media and communications, fine arts and health studies. It was in this CAE's system where students were prepared to be early childhood, elementary, and secondary teachers. These programs lead to a three-year Diploma of Teaching or a four-year Bachelor of Education. This approach was based on the Australian pattern of specialized teacher training which was generally provided immediately upon graduation from high school. Universities provided training in early childhood-related areas such as psychology, psychiatry, social work and medicine but did not include specialized early childhood teacher preparation per se (although they do provide secondary teacher preparation).