Thomas G O'Connor

..To examine attachment disturbances and disorder in a sample of children adopted into the U.K. following severe early privation and in a comparison sample of nondeprived, within-country, early-placed adoptees...

..Finally, the limitations and data analytic considerations of synthesizing behavioural genetic and attachment research are outlined...

..Children in stepfamilies and single-parent families exhibit elevated levels of behavioural and emotional problems compared with children in intact (biological) families, but there is variation within and across these family types...

..The direction of effects appeared to be primarily child to parent. The findings underscore the need for further research on the long-term impact of early experiences on psychosocial development...

..Animal experiments suggest that maternal stress and anxiety during pregnancy have long-term effects on the behaviour of the offspring...

..To investigate whether family type and psychosocial risks indexed by family type were systematically associated with differences in health outcomes in children...

..Questions remain concerning the 'effects' of parenting on behavioural/emotional problems in children. This annotation discusses recent findings concerning the parenting 'effects' literature and identifies areas in need of further research...

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..To examine the hypothesis that the effects of postnatal depression on children's behavioral/emotional problems are explained by antenatal maternal mood...

..Finally, implications of these models of early experiences for intervention and prevention are examined and identified as an important methodological tool for further research...

..Previous animal investigations link antenatal stress with a range of persistent behavioural abnormalities in the offspring. The current study examined if the effect was also found in humans through middle childhood...

..The implications for genetic influences on the environment and for understanding nonshared and shared environmental influences are discussed...

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..In addition, the resilience suggested at the assessment at age 4 years was maintained longitudinally, but there was no further evidence of catch-up or recovery...

..The results raise both theoretical and methodological implications for attachment research on very deprived children...

..There was some evidence that emotion recognition might play a role in the emergence of these problems, but other measures of social competence and theory of mind showed no associations with the onset of emotional problems...

..When these factors were taken into account, only small between-group differences in attainment remained...

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..The ALSPAC study team comprises interviewers, computer technicians, laboratory technicians, clerical workers, research scientists, volunteers, and managers who continue to make the study possible...

..Family history studies of co-morbidity have found familial aggregation with tics, especially for early-onset OCD, and familial aggregation with anxiety disorders...

..The findings are discussed in terms of the possibility of a sensitive period for development...

..The prediction from in utero testosterone exposure to fear reactivity in boys extends prior research on prenatal testosterone and may represent an association with a general predisposition to greater arousal and reactivity...

..To investigate the association between normative repetitive routines of childhood and paediatric obsessive compulsive symptom syndrome (OCSS) and the extent to which it is genetically mediated...

..The pattern of findings suggests some form of early biological programming or neural damage stemming from institutional deprivation, but the heterogeneity in outcome indicates that the effects are not deterministic...

..To examine the etiologies of covariation of childhood sleep problems and other behavioral/emotional problems in young children...

..The present study reports prevalence estimates in a community sample of 6-year-old twins, and patterns of genetic and environmental influences on these early-onset anxiety disorders...

..Animal studies have shown that prenatal stress is linked with altered laterality in the offspring...

..We examined the genetic and environmental influences on the comorbidity between three common childhood anxiety disorders: Specific Phobia, Separation Anxiety and Social Phobia...

..In particular, it is unclear whether or not attachment security is distinguishable from other qualities of the parent-adolescent relationship and predicts adjustment independently of alternate measures of it...

..The relevance of these findings to humans is not known...

..Implications for views on "family boundaries" are considered...

..To examine the clinical correlates and predictions from attachment narratives in a sample of early school-age children from a high psychosocial risk, ethnically diverse sample...

..However, little is known about the genetics of these categories and especially about the phenotypic and genetic structure of related behaviours in pre-school children...

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..The primary factor affecting the prevalence and persistence of the behaviors was the length of time the children had spent in institutional deprivation...

..There are now some opportunities for direct translational research but there is a much greater need for hypothesis-based bridging studies that occupy a crucial mid-phase in the pathway from science findings to health benefits...

..The major remaining research challenges and the likely clinical benefits that should derive from genetic research are considered in relation to both current knowledge and that anticipated to emerge from research over the next decade...

..Developmental reading problems show strong persistence across the school years; less is known about poor readers' later progress in literacy skills...

..Although the present findings have implications for task modification, such naturalistic, dynamic stimuli are held to offer an important means of studying subtle difficulties in mentalistic understanding...

..To avoid biasing results, researchers who aim to compare groups in terms of their family history should ensure that the informants reporting on these groups do not differ in terms of age, sex or personal history of disorder...

..The possible reasons for this are discussed, together with important conceptual and methodological issues to problems of defining onset, and the choice of appropriate designs for data analysis...

..It is unclear how best to combine family history reports into an overall score. We compare the predictive validity of different family history scores...

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..Although there is good evidence that autism is a multifactorial disorder, an adequate understanding of the genetic and non-genetic causes has yet to be achieved...

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..The benefits and limitations of using natural experiments are reviewed and several case illustrations are considered...

..The objective of the study was to examine specificity, order of appearance, and developmental changes in the relationships between sleep problems and behavioral problems in children...

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..It is concluded that environmental risk hypotheses can be (and have been) put to the test but that it is usually necessary to use a combination of research strategies...

..The family loading for scholastic achievement difficulties was slightly, but significantly, higher when autism was accompanied by severe retardation...

..A follow-up of these children when they were approximately 6 years of age showed that language outcome was poor for the subgroup (n = 4) who did not develop normal language alongside the use of a private language...

..Patterns of expression within the families did not support a simple X-linked nor an imprinted X-linked mode of inheritance. The basis for sex differences in rates of expression is discussed...

..CONCLUSIONS: Adolescent depression is associated with raised risks of adult suicidality and with persistent interpersonal difficulties. Youths with CD-MDD show more severe and pervasive social dysfunction...

..There are good reasons to assume that adverse early experience plays a contributory role in the genesis of personality disorder. However, at this stage, evidence is still limited on how this comes about...

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..CONCLUSIONS: Adolescent depression carries an elevated risk of adult depression irrespective of comorbidity. Comorbid conduct disorder in childhood is associated with raised rates of other psychiatric outcomes...