Students with Disabilities More Likely to Be Bullied

Children and __teens with disabilities are much more likely to be bullied in school, compared to their peers without disabilities, and this victimization tends to persist into high school, according to a new study led by a researcher at the University of Missouri (MU).

The findings suggest that youth with disabilities are not developing adequate social skills to help protect themselves from bullying as they get older.

“This study points out the necessity for special education programs to teach appropriate response skills to children with disabilities,” said Dr. Chad Rose, an assistant professor of special education in the MU College of Education.

“Schools need to further develop these programs by tailoring social development goals for each individual student to ensure they are learning the social skills that will help them prevent bullying from occurring.”

“Prior research has shown that children with disabilities, when bullied, may react aggressively when they lack appropriate response skills. Teaching these students how to communicate more effectively with their peers and with teachers can help them react to bullying in more positive ways, as well as prevent it from occurring at all.”

During the three-year study, more than 6,500 children from grades three to 12 were surveyed about their experiences with bullying. A total of 16 percent of the children surveyed had disabilities, specifically learning disabilities, emotional disabilities, and autism spectrum disorders.

Rose and Dr. Nicholas Gage, an assistant professor from the University of Florida, discovered that bullying rates for all children peaked in third grade, were reduced significantly in middle school and then rose again during high school. However, while mirroring this trend, bullying rates for students with disabilities remained consistently higher than those without disabilities.

“Studying how individual children are victimized by bullying over time has revealed that children with disabilities are not learning how to effectively respond to victimization,” Rose said.

“As children continued to mature, we expected to see that they would slowly develop social skills that would help them combat victimization and close the gap with children without disabilities, but that was not the case.”

“Their rates of bullying victimization remained consistently higher, which shows that current intervention approaches are not effectively preparing these children who are most at-risk for bullying involvement,” said Rose.

Rose explains that since many schools have been devoting more and more time to common core subjects and standardized test preparation, there has been less available time to focus on teaching students important social skills. He believes that schools should put more emphasis on helping children develop better social skills, especially kids with disabilities.

The study was published in the journal Exceptional Children.

Source: University of Missouri-Columbia

Sleep Loss Affects Kids’ Brains Differently Than Adults

Most any parent can attest to the consequences of their child not getting enough sleep. Now, new research discovers sleep deprivation affects kids’ brains much differently than adults’.

“The process of sleep may be involved in brain ‘wiring’ in childhood and thus affect brain maturation,” said Salome Kurth, Ph.D., first author of the study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Kurth is a researcher at the University Hospital of Zurich.

“This research shows an increase in sleep need in posterior brain regions in children.”

This contrasts with what researchers know about the effects of sleep deprivation in adults, where the effect is typically concentrated in the frontal regions of the brain.

After staying up too late, both children and adults need a period of deep sleep to recover.

This recovery phase is characterized by an increase in an electrical pattern called slow-wave activity, which can be measured with a non-invasive technique called an electroencephalogram. With a large number of electrode channels distributed across the scalp, this method also detects which brain regions show more slow-wave activity than others.

Supported by a large student team, Kurth and her colleagues, Drs. Monique LeBourgeois at the University of Colorado Boulder and Sean Deoni of Brown University, studied the effects of 50 percent sleep deprivation in a group of 13 children between the ages of 5 and 12 years.

The team first measured the children’s deep sleep patterns during a normal night’s sleep. They then re-measured on another night after the researchers had kept the children up well past their bedtimes by reading and playing games with them.

After only getting half of a night’s worth of sleep, the children showed more slow-wave activity towards the back regions of the brain — the parieto-occipital areas. This suggests that the brain circuitry in these regions may be particularly susceptible to a lack of sleep.

The team also measured how this deep sleep activity correlated with the myelin content of the brain — a cornerstone of brain development.

Myelin is a fatty microstructure of the brain’s white matter that allows electrical information between brain cells to travel faster. It can be measured with a specific magnetic resonance imaging technique.

“The results show that the sleep loss effect on the brain is specific to certain regions and that this correlates with the myelin content of the directly adjacent regions: The more myelin in a specific area, the more the effect appears similar to adults,” said Kurth.

“It is possible that this effect is temporary and only occurs during a ‘sensitive period’ when the brain undergoes developmental changes.”

Further exploration is needed before drawing any conclusions about how insufficient sleep affects early brain developmental processes in the longer term. But for now, these results suggest that going to bed too late hits kids differently.

Source: Frontiers

Fathers’ Embrace of Role Tied To Less Behavioral Problems in Pre-Teens

A new U.K. study suggests a new father’s adjustment to being a parent and his confidence in this role, rather than the amount of direct childcare they give, seems to be important during a child’s early years.

Investigators discovered pre-teens whose dads embrace parenthood may be less prone to behavioral issues.

The nature of parenting in a child’s early years is thought to influence their short- and long-term well-being and mental health, which are in turn linked to development and educational attainment.

But it’s not entirely clear what impact the father’s role might have, as much of the research to date has tended to characterize paternal involvement in a child’s upbringing as one-dimensional.

The researchers therefore drew on data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) study, which has been tracking the health of nearly 15,000 children since birth, to assess several aspects of paternal involvement. The study is published in the online journal BMJ Open.

The parents of 10,440 children living with both their mother and dad at the age of 8 months were asked to complete a comprehensive questionnaire about their and their child’s mental health. The questionnaire explored attitudes to parenting; time spent on childcare; their child’s behavior and development; as well as details of household income/education.

When the children were aged 9 and 11, their behavior was assessed using the strength and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ). This covers emotional symptoms, behavior (conduct) problems, hyperactivity, peer relationship issues, and helpfulness (pro-social behavior).

Fathers’ parental involvement was measured by asking them to rate their level of agreement with 58 statements, reflecting the amount of direct childcare they engaged in, including household chores; their attitudes to parenting; the relationship with their child; and how they felt about the birth 8 weeks and 8 months afterwards.

The final analysis was based on almost 7,000 9-year-olds and nearly 6,500 of the same children at the age of 11.

Three key factors emerged in relation to the children’s SDQ scores:

1. fathers’ emotional response to the baby and their parenting role;
2. how much time the dads spent on direct childcare;
3. and how well they adjusted to their new role, including how confident they felt in their abilities as a parent and partner.

Investigators discovered a father’s emotional response and confidence in their new role were most strongly associated with lower odds of behavioral problems when their children reached 9 and 11 years of age.

A high paternal factor 1 score was associated with 21 percent and 19 percent lower odds of a higher SDQ score at the ages of 9 and 11, respectively. Similarly, a high paternal factor 3 score was associated with 28 percent lower odds of a higher SDQ score at both time points.

When researchers adjust for potentially influential factors, such as age at fatherhood, educational attainment and household income, hours worked and sex of the child, the results remained consistent.

Researchers noted, however, that the study is observational and no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect. Moreover, researchers note the study dates back 25 years, and parenting styles may have changed, so the findings may therefore not be widely generalizable.

But they write, “The findings of this research study suggest that it is psychological and emotional aspects of paternal involvement in a child’s infancy that are most powerful in influencing later child behavior, and not the amount of time that fathers are engaged in childcare or domestic tasks in the household.”

Source: British Medical Journal (BMJ)

US Kids’ Diet Improves, But Still A Long Way to Go

New research finds that while the diet of U.S. children has improved markedly, quite a bit of work still needs to be done as on the whole, diet quality remains poor.

Investigators tracked diet between 1999 and 2012 for more than 38,000 kids and found that disparities remain among key subgroups.

The bottom-line measure in the study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition is the standard, 100-point Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2010) score. During the study period the average HEI-2010 rose to 50.9 from 42.5 as children ate more healthy foods, such as whole fruit, and became increasingly likely to avoid “empty calories,” such as sugary drinks.

The latter improvement explained about one-third of the total improvement.

“I am encouraged by the gains,” said study lead author Xiao Gu, a master’s student in epidemiology in the Brown University School of Public Health. He collaborated with corresponding author Katherine Tucker, Ph.D., of the University of Massachusetts Lowell on the study, which analyzed data gathered from 38,487 children aged 2 to 18 in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).

“Although we showed several components still need to be improved … our paper provides evidence that we are on the correct track,” Gu added.

Indeed, many of the components that make up the overall HEI-2010 score improved significantly. Consumption of whole grains; dairy; whole fruit; total fruit; seafood and plant proteins, greens and beans, and fatty acids; total protein foods; and refined grains improved, while intake of empty calories declined.

Sodium consumption, however, got a bit worse and in many cases the component scores improved from poor levels, suggesting that nutrition among U.S. children needs to improve further.

“The average score for whole grains is only 2, which is far below its maximum of 10, even though we observed a significant increasing trend,” Gu said.

“For whole fruit the optimal is 5 but the average we observed is 2.1. I think the increasing trend is encouraging but the current dietary quality level is disappointing.”

NHANES gathered the data by surveying thousands of different participating children (or their caregivers) every two years, asking each member of that nationally representative sample to recall what food they ate the prior day. Gu and Tucker used that nutrition intake data to calculate the HEI scores.

Investigators found demographic disparities did persist. Although every demographic subgroup of children shared in the gains, the pace varied and disparities remain.

The score among non-Hispanic black children improved to 48.4 in 2012 from 39.6 in 1999, but over the same period the score for non-Hispanic whites rose to 50.2 from 42.1. While the gap narrowed somewhat, a clear disparity persists.

Gu and Tucker also looked at economic correlates of nutrition. They found that as household wealth increased, so did the degree of gains. HEI-2010 scores rose 23.8 percent among the wealthiest third of the sample, 19.2 percent among the middle third, and 18.2 percent among the least wealthy third.

The authors also analyzed diet quality among children in federal nutrition assistance programs. Over the course of the study period, the HEI-2010 scores of children in families receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits began to lag those of children not receiving such benefits; children benefitting from the Women Infants and Children (WIC) program pulled further ahead of children not receiving that assistance.

That difference might in part relate to how the two programs are structured, Gu said. In SNAP, because consumers can buy almost any food they might buy less healthy ones if they are less expensive. WIC, on the other hand, limits food choices to ones that adhere to dietary guidelines.

The broad-based quality gains evident in the average American child’s diet so far this century may stem from sound policymaking, Gu said.

Over the same period researchers, policymakers and non-governmental organizations have worked well together, for example, to improve nutritional guidelines. Local initiatives may have helped further, Gu said, by passing soda taxes in several cities that could further discourage empty calorie consumption.

“We should continue improving our policies and programs along with doing more research, because that has really made Americans healthier,” Gu said.

Source: Brown University

Stuttering Tied to Brain Changes in Speech, Attention Regions

A new study links stuttering to changes in brain circuits that control speech production, as well as circuits that support attention and emotion.

For the study, researchers at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) used proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to look at brain regions in adults and children who stutter.

Consistent with past functional MRI studies, the findings demonstrate neuro-metabolite alterations across the brain, according to the researchers.

Developmental stuttering is a neuropsychiatric condition. Its origins in the brain are only partly known.

To measure an index of neural density related to stuttering in circuits and brain regions suspected to be affected, the scientists performed proton shift imaging of the brain in 47 children and 47 adults. The study included subjects with and without stuttering.

The research team found that affected brain regions included major nodes of the so-called Bohland speech-production network (associated with the regulation of motor activity); the default-mode network (involved in the regulation of attention); and the emotional-memory network (responsible for regulating emotion.)

“That stuttering is related to speech and language-based brain circuits seems clear,” said Bradley S. Peterson, M.D., director of the Institute for the Developing Mind at CHLA, and director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.

“Attention-regulating portions of the brain are related to control circuits that are important in governing behavior. People with changes here are more likely to stutter and have more severe stuttering. And emotions like anxiety and stress also tend to make stuttering worse, likely because this network interacts with language and attention control circuits.”

The initial MRS study of stuttering confirmed that disturbances in neuronal or membrane metabolism contribute to the development of stuttering, he noted.

Looking at a combination of children and adults to detect the effects of stuttering, independent of life-stage, revealed differences between children and adults within both the stuttering and control samples. This suggests different metabolic profiles in children versus adults who stutter, according to the researchers. Few sex-specific effects of stuttering on brain metabolites were observed, they added.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Source: Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

Parents’ Confidence Can Play Role in Kids’ Sleep Duration

Children’s sleep duration may be influenced by how confident their parents are in their abilities to help their kids get enough sleep, according to a new survey-based study.

Longer sleep for kids was also associated with how long the parents slept themselves.

The findings suggest that efforts to address poor sleeping habits among children may be more effective with family-based interventions.

According to the survey, 57 percent of parents reported feeling “very” or “extremely” confident that they could help their child get enough sleep. Children of parents with greater confidence got approximately 0.67 more hours of sleep per day. The results remained after controlling for other factors such as child age, gender, race/ethnicity, and parent education.

The study also found that child sleep duration was 0.09 hours per day longer for each one hour increase in parent sleep duration.

“Our study suggests that educating parents about their own sleep health and promoting increased confidence in their ability to help their children get enough sleep are potential areas of intervention to increase child sleep duration, either through formal programs or in a pediatrician’s office,” said lead author Corinna Rea, M.D., instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and attending physician at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Children between the ages of six and 12 years should sleep nine to 12 hours per 24 hours on a regular basis to promote optimal health, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Habitually sleeping fewer than the number of recommended hours is associated with attention, behavior, and learning problems, and it increases health and safety risks.

The researchers also investigated other potential links between child sleep duration and parent behaviors and practices, including screen time, physical activity, and limits placed on child TV viewing. Surprisingly, after adjustment for demographic characteristics, these factors were not significantly associated with child sleep duration.

“Our results also may suggest that individual parent behaviors do not reflect a ‘family lifestyle,’ but rather that parental sleep is directly linked to child sleep irrespective of others behaviors,” said Rea.

The research involved 790 parents with a mean age of 41 years and their children, between the ages of six and 12 years, who were participating in a randomized controlled obesity trial. Trained research assistants administered a survey to parents over the phone. About 92 percent of the respondents were mothers. Average daily sleep duration was 6.9 hours for parents and 9.2 hours for children.

The authors note that there are several parental behaviors that can play into the link between parent and child sleep duration. For example, parents may influence child sleep duration by serving as role models, encouraging and supporting their child’s healthy choices, or establishing a family bedtime.

Study results are published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.

Source: American Academy of Sleep Medicine

Mom’s Support in Early Number Play Helps Boost Future Math Scores

Young children whose mothers support them during math play — such as helping them label how many items are in a set — tend to have better math achievement at ages 4-½ and 5 years, according to a new study conducted by researchers at Boston College.

Their findings are published in the journal Child Development.

Early exposure to math is just as important as early literacy for children’s future academic achievement. In fact, research has shown that early math skills predict later school success better than early reading skills, and can even predict income in adulthood.

Until now, however, there has been little research directly examining how parents’ support of early math play helps develop children’s future math skills.

For the study, researchers developed ways to assess mothers’ support of their children’s math skills by examining how moms supported and guided their 3-year-olds’ learning as they played with a toy cash register and blocks.

They applied these new assessments to previously videotaped 10-minute free-play interactions between 140 mothers and children in Boston who were part of the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The participants were economically and ethnically diverse.

Mothers supported their children’s math skills in a variety of ways: helping their children count objects, identify written numbers, or label the size of sets of objects.

In particular, children whose parents supported them in labeling quantities of small sets performed better on math tests in preschool than children whose parents didn’t support them in this way. These children also did better on addition and subtraction problems as late as first grade.

“Many young children can count from 1 to 10 without understanding the meaning of the numbers they’re counting,” said study leader Beth Casey, professor emeritus of applied developmental and educational psychology at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College.

“What may be particularly important at around age 3 is for parents to present their children with small groups of one, two, or three objects, and tell them how many objects there are — for example, by saying at the grocery store, ‘See, there are two apples in our bag.’”

“It’s also important for parents to encourage and help children label how many objects there are, for example, by asking, ‘Can you give me three cups?’ or ‘Now that you’ve counted them, can you tell me how many flowers there are?'”

The researchers suggest that helping children learn how to label set sizes may support their development of a crucial concept in math knowledge — understanding that the last number stated when counting a set of objects represents the quantity of the whole set. Such understanding may provide a foundation for developing more complex number skills.

“Our results suggest that early maternal support of numerical skills may have lasting and strong connections to children’s math achievement, at least through first grade, which is three years after mothers were observed,” said Eric Dearing, professor of applied developmental and educational psychology at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, who was also part of the study.

“These connections were strong and persisted even when we ruled out the potential role of demographics — including mothers’ education — the more general level of learning stimulation mothers provided, and both mothers’ and children’s intelligence.”

Source: Society for Research in Child Development

Eating Walnuts May Improve Mood in Young Men

New research suggests walnuts could be the key for a happier state-of-mind among college students.

Experts note that college can be a stressful time for young adults as they figure out how to manage intense daily routines that include work, study and play. Eat well, exercise and get plenty of sleep is a familiar mantra to alleviate this stress.

A new study by a University of New Mexico professor now suggests walnuts can also contribute to mental health.

In this first intervention study in humans, nutrition professor Dr. Peter Pribis measured the effect of walnut consumption on mood.

“In the past, studies on walnuts have shown beneficial effects on many health outcomes like heart disease, diabetes and obesity,” said Pribis. “Our study was different because we focused on cognition, and in this controlled randomized trial (CRT) we measured mood outcomes in males and females.”

The participants of the study were 64 students between the ages of 18-25. They represented most ethnic groups: Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic and Asian.

The participants were asked to eat three slices of banana bread every day for sixteen weeks — eight weeks of banana bread with walnuts and eight weeks without walnuts.

The nuts were finely ground into the dough so the two banana breads were similar in taste and appearance. While eating banana bread with walnuts the participants consumed half a cup of walnuts daily.

The mood of the students was measured at the end of each eight-week period.

“We used a validated questionnaire called Profiles of Mood States (POMS),” said Pribis. “It is one of the most widely used and accepted mood scales in studies on cognition. The test has six mood domains: tension, depression, anger, fatigue, vigor, confusion and also provides a Total Mood Disturbance score (TMD). The lower the TMD score the better the mood.”

In this double-blind, randomized, placebo controlled, cross-over feeding trial with walnuts for eight weeks, Pribis observed a significant improvement in mood in young, healthy males.

“There was a meaningful, 28 percent improvement of mood in young men,” said Pribis. “However we did not observe any improvement of mood in females. Why this is we do not know.”

Researchers explain that there are several nutrients in walnuts — alpha-linolenic acid, vitamin E, folate, polyphenols or melatonin — that could be responsible for the improved mood like. However, this was a whole food study, so in the end it was the synergy and interaction of all the nutrients in the walnuts combined.

For Pribis, the lesson learned from this food study is clear, “Eat more walnuts. This is an easy intervention. They’re not only good for your mood, but overall health as well. The recommended amount is one handful per day.”

With this knowledge in hand, and walnuts in the other, young men can better tackle life’s daily stresses.

Source: University of New Mexico/EurekAlert

Autistic Toddlers May Miss Significance of Eye Contact

Less eye contact is a signal symptom of autism; early screening protocols and diagnostic instruments rely heavily on it. But why kids with autism look less at other people’s eyes has not been known.

New research from Marcus Autism Center, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and Emory University School of Medicine finds that young children with autism do not avoid eye contact on purpose. Instead, they miss the significance of social information in others’ eyes.

“This is important because we’re disentangling very different understandings of autism,” said Jennifer Moriuchi, a graduate student at Emory University.

“Depending on why you think children with autism are making less eye contact, you might have different approaches to treatment and different ideas about the brain basis of autism. Drug treatments and behavioral interventions are already being developed and tested on the basis of these different explanations.

“By clarifying which explanation is correct, we can make sure that we’re addressing the correct underlying concern.”

Two explanations for reduced eye contact have been proposed. One explanation holds that children with autism avoid eye contact because they find it stressful and negative. The other explanation holds that children with autism look less at other people’s eyes because the social cues from the eyes are not perceived as particularly meaningful or important.

The new research used eye-tracking measures and was conducted on the day children were first diagnosed; it shows that young children with autism do not actively avoid eye contact, and it confirms that other people’s eyes are not aversive to young children with autism.

Instead, young children with autism look less at the eyes because they appear to miss the social significance of eye contact.

Together with Drs. Ami Klin and Warren Jones, Moriuchi studied how 86 two-year-old children with and without autism paid attention to other people’s eyes. Children with autism watched a series of carefully made videos.

“Before each video, we flashed a small picture to capture the child’s attention, and when they looked to where the picture had been, they found that they were either looking directly at another person’s eyes or looking away from the eyes,” said Moriuchi.

“When we did this repeatedly, we found that young children with autism continued to look straight at the eyes. Like their peers without autism, they didn’t look away from the eyes or try to avoid the eyes in any way.”

However, when varying levels of socially meaningful eye contact were presented, children with autism looked less at other people’s eyes than their peers without autism.

“These results go against the idea that young children with autism actively avoid eye contact,” said Jones.

“They’re looking less at the eyes not because of an aversion to making eye contact, but because they don’t appear to understand the social significance of eye contact.”

The researchers studied eye gaze responses in young children with autism at the time of their initial diagnosis in order to have clearer evidence about the initial underlying reasons for reduced eye contact.

Some adults and older children with autism have reported feeling anxious in response to eye contact. “Our results aren’t meant to contradict these personal experiences,” emphasized Jones.

“For children with autism, social signals can be confusing. And as children grow up to be adults, those signals can become even more challenging to understand. This research highlights the opportunity to target the right underlying concerns as early as possible.”

“Studies like this one help advance our understanding of autism and improve the way scientists and clinicians develop new treatments,” said Lisa Gilotty, Ph.D., chief of the Research Program on Autism Spectrum Disorders at the National Institute of Mental Health.

The study was reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Source: Emory University

Parents Impact Kids’ Cognition More But Social Policies Still Matter

A new study of the factors that influence childhood cognition has found that the role of parents is more important than far-reaching public policies — but that public policies can make a difference.

“We looked at the effects of parental characteristics on the cognition of children in the U.S. and Great Britain,” said Dr. Toby Parcel, a professor of sociology at North Carolina State University and corresponding author of the study. “Basically, we wanted to see whether the welfare state in Great Britain gave its children an advantage.”

He noted that an earlier work by the researchers looked at children’s home environments and behavioral problems across the two countries.

“We found that parents were equally important in both places,” Parcel said. “In this study we looked at three things: pre-reading skills and scores of reading and mathematics achievement.”

For the new study, researchers at NC State and California State University, Northridge, analyzed two sets of data: A representative sample of 3,439 children between the ages of five and 13 in the U.S.; and a representative sample of 1,309 children in Great Britain across the same age range.

“We were able to do this study because the two data sets are comparable — same age range, same timeframe, and same measures of key variables,” Parcel explained.

The researchers discovered that parental characteristics were equally important in both countries in supporting stronger child cognition. However, there were some exceptions.

For example, the researchers found that children of single-mother families were at a disadvantage for verbal facility in the U.S., but not in Great Britain. Similarly, they found that a larger family size was associated with lower math scores in the U.S., but not in Great Britain.

“This may indicate that parents have fewer resources per child in larger families, and that the government in Great Britain has instituted policies that help compensate for that, whereas those policies are lacking in the U.S.,” Parcel said. “Those policies could possibly include the child allowances and National Health Service, which may help parents use their own resources to better support child cognition.”

The researchers also identified many ways in which the U.S. and Great Britain are similar. In both countries, low birth weight, health limitations, and larger family size were associated with lower verbal facility.

Child health limitations were also linked to lower math scores in both countries, and health limitations, male gender, and larger family size were associated with lower reading achievement in both countries.

The mother’s cognitive ability and stronger home environments were associated with higher verbal facility, math scores, and reading achievement in both countries, according to the study’s findings.

“Parents are equally important in both societies, and policies can’t replace good parents,” Parcel said. “But there do appear to be areas where policies can support families and help children succeed.”

The study was published in the journal Social Science Research.

Source: North Carolina State University

 
Photo Credit: MIKI Yoshihito. Shared under a Creative Commons license..

Teen Stalking Victims at Higher Risk for Depression, Risky Behaviors

A new study has found that 14 percent of girls and 13 percent of boys are victims of stalking.

These __teens are also more likely to report symptoms linked to depression, as well as risky behavior, including binge drinking and sexting, according to the study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

For the study, researchers surveyed 1,236 randomly selected teens. The survey asked __teens specific questions about the actions of others. Because it’s generally agreed that stalking requires a pattern of repeated unwanted behaviors, researchers used a list of 19 stalking victimization indicators and gathered data about how often each one occurred.

Teens were then separated into three classes based on the frequency of exposure: A non-victim class, a minimal exposure class, and a victim class.

Class size was fairly consistent across genders with 50 percent of girls and 53 percent of boys falling into the non-victim class, 36 percent of girls and 34 percent of boys qualifying for the minimal exposure class, and 14 percent of girls and 13 percent of boys making up the victim class.

“Little is actually known about the rates and potential consequences of stalking victimization in developing adolescent populations,” said lead investigator Dennis E. Reidy, Ph.D., Division of Violence Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

“Identifying how these different stalking tactics manifest in different combinations is critical because different stalking profiles likely confer varying degrees and forms of risk. For instance, a victim primarily experiencing surveillance/monitoring by a stalker may suffer far fewer physical, social, and psychological consequences than a victim of a stalker showing more diversity in stalking behavior.”

Once the researchers identified the three classes, they conducted further analysis to determine the potential mental and behavioral health factors associated with being a victim of stalking.

Along with tracking the stalking indicators, the survey also asked the teens about psychiatric symptoms, such as mood disorder, post-traumatic stress, feelings of hopelessness; sexual behaviors, including number of partners, frequency of sexting, oral sex, and intercourse; and substance use.

The findings revealed that teens in the victim class were more likely to report mood symptoms and instances of risky behavior than teens in the other two groups.

“A general trend across boys and girls alike emerged,” Reidy said. “Adolescents in the victim class reported more psychiatric symptoms during the past month and a higher frequency of physical dating violence victimization, alcohol use, and binge drinking during the prior 12 months. Additionally, girls in the victim class reported higher prevalence of marijuana use and more sexting and oral sex partners during the past year.”

“The data suggest a substantial proportion of adolescents are victims of stalking and are likewise at risk for a number of deleterious health outcomes,” he added. “As such, this population merits further attention by prevention researchers and practitioners.”

Source: Elsevier

Computerized “Building Blocks” Provide Insight on Developmental Problems

Building blocks, the classic children’s toy, are now being imbedded with technology that may provide a clearer view of problems a child or adult may suffer due to developmental disabilities, brain trauma, or dementia.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University say preliminary findings show the new tool aids therapeutic interventions for children with an autistic spectrum disorder, attention deficit disorder, or speech delays.

In testing college-age adults, blocks with sensors inside detected hyperactivity and revealed the problem-solving strategies used by each subject. The sensors also detected performance accuracy and the time each user took to complete given tasks.

The blocks are fully automated, wirelessly relaying data to a computer. The technology could potentially allow a parent or other caregiver in a rural home to administer tests while a trained clinician hundreds of miles away completes the assessment by internet.

“These Sensor-Integrated Geometric Blocks, or SIG-Blocks, can be used for cognitive testing and training with subjects of any age, and the testing is customizable,” said Kiju Lee, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Case Western Reserve and leader of block development.

The research is published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior. Lee’s coauthors are Donghwa Jeong, a PhD student at the Case School of Engineering; Rachel Schindler, a PhD student in psychology; and Elizabeth Short, psychology professor.

In a pilot set of tests, 89 college students played what are called Tangible Geometric Games, using blocks with printed geometric patterns on their surfaces. The games required them to:

• Assemble multiple blocks to reflect an image of blocks on a computer screen.
• Fill in a missing block to match a pattern shown on a computer screen.
• Recreate a pattern flashed on the screen and removed.

“One advantage of using the blocks is they eliminate human error and biases,” Short said.

Human error can include when to begin and finish timing a standardized intelligence test, how closely a clinician monitors the subject, and interpretations of activity.

Research has shown that adults — including experimenters — are biased toward subjects who appear intelligent, giving them a benefit of the doubt over subjects who appear less so.

“Testing has always been standardized, but this is more fine-tuned and more accurate,” Short said.

“The sensor-enabled blocks record the movement pattern — each attempt, each movement, and how long it takes, hesitancy, whether a subject thinks through the task and makes the necessary manipulation or whether he turns and turns the block until he gets it right.”

Another advantage, the researchers say, is testing with the blocks is not as rigid as standardized tests.

“If a subject can’t assemble three blocks into a pattern, we can move to two blocks or simplify the pattern,” Short said. “This way, I can get to the skill problem: they can’t rotate the block, or can’t invert the block.”

The blocks can then be used to train the children or adults to use the blocks in certain ways, to try to address the skill problem.

Additionally, researchers have also been testing children ages four to eight, some with autism spectrum disorder, speech delays, and hyperactivity. The blocks are also being used to test adult patients who have suffered from traumatic brain injuries.

Lee has also started to use this block technology and games on older adults.

“Psychologists have used block design tests for more than 100 years, so we know which designs are difficult to reproduce and the time it takes,” explains Grover “Cleve” Gilmore, dean of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences and professor of psychology and social work.

“For the first time we can evaluate the micro aspects of manipulating each block and the full assembly. I think this will give us a better understanding of cognition and what happens in aging and what happens with dementia.”

Lee said the team has incorporated computational measures of play complexity that allow them to see correlations with age. To look further, the researchers are in the process of designing tests and games that are individualized for each user. Lee’s lab has also been developing new versions of blocks, which provide visual, tactile and auditory feedback.

All will be incorporated into new games.

“We’ve got a lot of testing to do in adults and children,” Short said. “But I’m cautiously optimistic this technology can give information.”

Source: Case Western Reserve University/EurekAlert
 
Photo: Sensor-Integrated Geometric Blocks, or SIG-Blocks, have a number of sensors inside that help reveal hyperactivity, problem-solving strategies and more during testing. Credit: Kiju Lee.

Early Interventions May Prevent Teen Substance Abuse

New research suggests it is never too early to begin interventions to reduce the risk of teen substance abuse.

Investigators from the University at Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) discovered that in some settings, interactions to prevent alcohol and drug use should begin in early childhood.

“The children of parents with alcohol problems are at much greater risk for underage drinking and developing a substance use disorder,” said the study’s author, Rina Das Eiden, Ph.D., senior research scientist at RIA.

“It’s important to understand when and under what circumstances such problems develop, so we can craft interventions to steer this high-risk population away from substance use and its attendant problems.”

Eiden examined different pathways to adolescent substance use, starting in infancy, for children of parents with alcohol use disorder (AUD). She found that maternal warmth and sensitivity in early childhood played a significant role.

“When mothers can be warm and sensitive during interactions with their toddlers, even under the stresses associated with their partners’ alcohol problems, there is a lower likelihood of adolescent substance use,” Eiden says.

Parents with AUD demonstrated lower rates of maternal sensitivity toward their toddlers, continuing into kindergarten age, Eiden found.

As the children entered middle school (sixth grade), their mothers were less likely to monitor peer groups and activities, leading to higher engagement with substance-using and delinquent peers and drinking in early adolescence (eight grade).

Investigators discovered these children also displayed lower self-regulation, or the ability to behave according to rules without supervision, at preschool age.

The low self-control can lead to problem behaviors from kindergarten age to early adolescence, and higher alcohol and marijuana use in late adolescence.

The results have implications for both the timing and content of preventive interventions against substance use among adolescents of parents with AUD.

Timing interventions in early childhood and before major developmental transitions, such as transition to school and moving from elementary to middle school, may be most beneficial, say the researchers.

For content, the most helpful interventions would be to encourage and support mothers in being warm and sensitive during interactions with their toddlers, and to keep a close eye their children’s activities and peer groups during the transition from middle childhood to early adolescence.

“This attention also would promote children’s self-regulation in the preschool years, which may lead to a decrease in problem behaviors from school age into adolescence,” Eiden says.

Source: University of Buffalo

Depression Seen As Rising Among Teens, Especially Girls

A new report from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health finds the rate of adolescents reporting a recent bout of clinical depression grew by 37 percent over the decade ending in 2014. In addition, the study found one in six teenage girls experiences an episode of depression.

The findings, published online in the journal Pediatrics, highlight a need to focus on the mental well-being of young people and match those in peril with mental health professionals.

“This shows us there are a growing number of untreated adolescents with depression and that we are making few inroads in getting mental health care to this population,” said study leader Ramin Mojtabai, M.D., Ph.D., MPH.

“It is imperative that we find ways to reach these teenagers and help them manage their depression.”

Experts also note that suicide rates have been increasing in recent years, particularly among adolescent girls and young women.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month reported that suicide rates among American middle school students — those aged 10 to 14 — were higher than rates of death from motor vehicle crashes in that age group.

For the study, the researchers analyzed data from the 2005 to 2014 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health on adolescents and young adults to examine trends in “major depressive episodes” over the previous year.

Major depressive episodes, also known as clinical depression, occur when someone develops a depressed mood or a loss of interest or pleasure in daily activities along with other depressive symptoms consistently for at least two weeks.

Overall, 176,245 adolescents aged 12 to 17 and 180,459 adults aged 18 to 25 were involved in the annual study between 2005 and 2014. Participants were told about symptoms of depression and were asked whether they had experienced them in the prior year.

In 2005, 8.7 percent of adolescents reported major depressive episodes in the past year; the percentage increased to 11.3 percent in 2014. Interestingly, the rate had remained relatively steady from 2005 to 2011, but grew significantly from 2012 through 2014.

Among girls, the prevalence of major depressive episodes increased from 13.1 percent in 2005 to 17.3 percent in 2014.

White adolescents and young adults were also more likely than non-whites to experience these episodes. Among young adults, the prevalence of these episodes grew from 8.8 percent in 2005 to 9.6 percent in 2014, though the increase was only found in those ages 18 to 20.

The findings were based only on self-reporting, not on clinical diagnoses. The researchers controlled for substance abuse and socioeconomic factors.

There were few significant changes in the use of mental health treatment among those adolescents and young adults with depression.

In adolescents, after 2011, there were small increases in visits to specialty mental health providers, the use of inpatient and day treatment centers and medication. These increases, however, were not enough to keep up with the increases in those with clinical depression.

The increase in some treatment could be related to the expansion of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and mental health parity legislation, though the future of health insurance expansion is in jeopardy following the recent election of a new U.S. president.

The researchers say it is unclear what is driving the rise in major depressive episodes, particularly among girls. They say adolescent girls may have been exposed to a greater degree of depression risk factors in recent years.

Cyberbullying, for example, may have increased more in girls, as studies have shown that they use mobile phones more frequently and intensively than boys, and problematic mobile phone use among young people has been linked to depressed mood.

The results coincided with a major economic downturn; however, there has not been an increase in the prevalence of clinical depression among adults over the period and this study found no increase among those age 21 to 25.

“The growing number of depressed adolescents and young adults who do not receive any mental health treatment calls for renewed outreach efforts, especially in school and college health centers, counseling services, and pediatric practices, where many of the untreated adolescents and adults with depression may be detected and managed,” Mojtabai said.

Source: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/EurekAlert

New Tools May Improve Effectiveness of Behavioral Therapy for Autism

Researchers say two new approaches have the potential to help a large number of children with autism spectrum disorder through behavioral therapy.

The two recently published papers represent new methods to develop precision treatments for people with autism.

The first paper found that functional MRIs (fMRI) could predict which children will benefit from Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) with near-perfect accuracy. PRT is one of a few evidence-based interventions for autism.

The technique, developed by researchers from the George Washington University (GWU) and the Children’s National Health System used fMRI to determine the functionality of four clusters in the brain that are involved in processing emotional information, social information, social attention, and social reward.

According to the study, children with higher functionality in those brain clusters benefitted more from PRT.

The behavioral therapy is currently effective in approximately 60 percent of children and is costly and time-intensive. fMRI could be used to identify the children most likely to respond to the treatment and may lead to follow-up research to better prepare those who would not.

“Parents want their children to receive the best treatment during this period, but it is not always clear how much a given treatment plan would benefit the children,” said Dr. Daniel Yang, researcher at the GWU Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute, and one of the lead authors of the paper.

“Although more research is needed, the current research provides an important first step toward establishing objective biomarkers that can accurately predict treatment outcome in young children with autism.”

The second paper examined the effect of the hormone oxytocin on the activity of social perception and reward brain circuits in children with autism spectrum disorder.

This was one of the first investigations of its kind.

Researchers found that by administering oxytocin as a nasal spray before social experiences, children had stronger responses to the social information. The findings suggest that use of oxytocin treatment before behavioral therapy could help reinforce the reward system in the brain that motivates social behaviors.

However, researchers stress that the treatment must be developed in conjunction with therapies designed to positively reward social behaviors, as heightened response to negative emotions can also occur.

“Although oxytocin is often referred to as the ‘love’ hormone, its effects actually depend on a child’s social surroundings,” said Dr. Allison Jack, assistant research professor of pharmacology and physiology at the GWU School of Medicine and Health Sciences and a co-author of the paper.

“Our study demonstrates that administering oxytocin to children with autism spectrum disorders has different effects on their brains depending on what type of environment they are exposed to.

“Only when children were experiencing positive social cues (like happy voices) did we see oxytocin having the effect that we would need it to have for therapeutic use, by increasing brain activity in the reward system.”

While the researchers said the results are promising, they do not suggest that using intranasal oxytocin should be considered as a core treatment for autism. Rather, the oxytocin treatment could be a way to enhance behavioral methods that are specifically tailored to provide positive social experiences and rewards.

The sample sizes of both studies were small, but the results were striking. The findings have the potential to complement each other, according to one of the corresponding authors.

“This research moves us closer to our goal of developing precision treatments for people with autism — getting the right treatment to the right person at the best time,” said Dr. Kevin Pelphrey, Carbonell Family Professor in Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders at GWU, and a co-author of both papers.

“As we move forward from here, we will launch a new era — brain imaging will become a routine part of a translational research chain. Brain imaging biological markers could be used, at the outset, to make treatment decisions related to dose, duration, intensity, and specific behavioral treatment approaches, as well as decisions about which drugs to use to improve treatment response.”

The papers were published in Translational Psychiatry and Scientific Reports, respectively.

Source: George Washington University/EurekAlert

Rat Study Suggests Teen Binge Drinking Can Affect Offspring

New research suggests repeated binge drinking during adolescence can affect brain functions in future generations.

Investigators at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine discovered the behavior could potentially place offspring at risk for such conditions as depression, anxiety, and metabolic disorders.

“Adolescent binge drinking not only is dangerous to the brain development of teenagers, but also may impact the brains of their children,” said senior author Toni R. Pak, Ph.D.

The study by Pak, first author Anna Dorothea Asimes, a Ph.D. student in Pak’s lab, and colleagues was presented at Neuroscience 2016, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

Using an animal model, researchers found that adolescent binge drinking altered the on-off switches of multiple genes in the brains of offspring. When genes are turned on, they instruct cells to make proteins, which ultimately control physical and behavioral traits.

The study found that in offspring, genes that normally are turned on were turned off, and vice versa.

Teenage binge drinking is a major health concern in the United States, with 21 percent of teenagers reporting they have done it during the past 30 days. Among drinkers under age 21, more than 90 percent of the alcohol is consumed during binge drinking episodes.

Binge drinking is defined as raising the blood alcohol concentration to 0.08 percent, the legal driving limit, within two hours (generally about five drinks for a male and four drinks for a female).

In the study, one group of adolescent male and female rats was exposed to alcohol in amounts comparable to six binge drinking episodes. The rats mated after becoming sober and the females remained sober during their pregnancies. (Thus any effects on offspring could not be attributed to fetal alcohol syndrome.)

The alcohol-exposed rats were compared to a control group of rats that were not exposed to alcohol.

In the offspring of alcohol-exposed rats, researchers examined genes in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain involved in many functions, including reproduction, response to stress, sleep cycles, and food intake.

Researchers looked for molecular changes to DNA that would reverse the on-off switches in individual genes. They found 159 such changes in the offspring of binge-drinking mothers, 93 gene changes in the offspring of binge-drinking fathers and 244 gene changes in the offspring of mothers and fathers who both were exposed to binge drinking.

The study is the first to show a molecular pathway that teenage binge drinking by either parent can cause changes in the neurological health of subsequent generations.

While findings from an animal model do not necessarily translate to humans, there are significant similarities between the study’s animal model and humans, including their metabolism of alcohol, the function of the hypothalamus, and the pattern and amount of binge drinking, Pak said.

The study was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Source: Loyola University/EurekAlert

Creating An Ideal Learning Environment

New research uses computer games and wearables to assess the physical and mental states that correspond to optimal attention and self-control among children and adults.

In a new study, investigators observed participants play computer games while simultaneously analyzing heart-rate and skin activity to detect bio-conditions that maximized learning potential.

“We know attention and self-regulation are critical for things like academic success, financial success, and general health and well-being,” said Dr. Catherine Spann, a researcher at the University of Texas at Arlington and principal investigator of the study.

“We think that if we understand the different physical and emotional states related to attention and self-regulation, we could develop targeted interventions for children and adults to achieve greater well-being,” she added.

Spann is currently conducting her Psychophysiology of Self-Regulation Study with volunteers age seven and up, in collaboration with the Research and Learning Center at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.

Participants complete a questionnaire about general levels of attention and self-regulation in everyday life, report how they are feeling, and then complete an attention and self-regulation task on an iPad. They wear a wristband to track their heart rate and skin activity, which indicate how calm and engaged they are.

“The wearable technology that we are using gives us information about their specific state and could tell us that they might not be ready to sit still and listen to a lecture or engage in certain learning activities,” Spann said.

Scores on the task are based on a combination of accuracy and reaction time. Spann is also examining how certain aspects of individuals such as gender, age and general self-regulation in daily life, impact how the body responds during a specific task requiring attention and self-regulation, especially when it comes to learning.

George Siemens, Ph.D., executive director of the research lab, underlined the importance of this research in the context of ongoing changes in education models.

“In order to make wise investments in our school systems, we need to better understand the core of learning,” Siemens said.

“We need to understand the conditions under which people optimally learn and the ways that educators can best support students.”

“The work that Dr. Spann is doing at the museum gives us important insight into how the mindsets and self-regulation of students impacts their ability to learn,” he added.

Source: University of Texas at Arlington

Smartphone App Shows Promise for Early Autism Detection

Emerging research suggests an app that tracks eye movements could determine, in less than a minute, if a child is showing signs of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

The study, co-authored by a University at Buffalo undergraduate and presented at the IEEE Wireless Health conference in October, provides hope that the app for cell phones, tablets or computers will lead to early detection of ASD and therefore better treatment.

Clinicians explain that early detection of autism can dramatically improve the benefits of treatment, but often the disability is not suspected until a child enters school.

“The brain continues to grow and develop after birth. The earlier the diagnosis, the better. Then we can inform families and begin therapies which will improve symptoms and outcome,” said Michelle Hartley-McAndrew, M.D., a co-author of the study.

“Although it’s never too late to start therapy, research demonstrates the earlier we diagnose, the better our outcomes,” said Kathy Ralabate Doody, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Exceptional Education at SUNY Buffalo State College and a co-author as well.

“We offer many educational interventions to help children with autism reach the same developmental milestones met by children with typical development.”

The principal author is Kun Woo Cho, an undergraduate majoring in computer science and engineering. She worked with her research advisor Wenyao Xu, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in University at Buffalo’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The app tracks eye movements of a child looking at pictures of social scenes; for example, those with multiple people. The eye movements of someone with ASD are often different from those of a person without autism. In the study, the app had an accuracy rating of 93.96 percent.

“Right now it is a prototype. We have to consider if other neurological conditions are included, like ADD, how that will affect the outcome,” Cho said.

Autism spectrum disorder affects one to two people per 1,000 worldwide. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about one in 68 children in the U.S. has been diagnosed with ASD.

“The beauty of the mobile app is that it can be used by parents at home to assess the risk of whether a child may have ASD,” Xu said. “This can allow families to seek therapy sooner, and improve the benefits of treatment,” he said.

The study found that photos of social scenes evoke the most dramatic differences in eye movement between children with and without ASD. The eye tracking patterns of children with ASD looking at the photos are scattered, versus a more focused pattern of children without ASD.

“We speculate that it is due to their lack of ability to interpret and understand the relationship depicted in the social scene,” Cho said.

Use of the app takes up to 54 seconds, which makes it less intrusive than other tests and valuable with children with short attention spans, Cho said.

The study included 32 children ranging in age from two to 10. Half of the children had been previously diagnosed with autism in accordance with DSM-V diagnostic criteria. The other half did not have ASD.

Further research will include expanding the study to another 300 to 400 children, which is about the annual enrollment for new evaluations at Children’s Guild Foundation Autism Spectrum Disorder Center at Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo.

Xu called the research “highly interdisciplinary” because of the need for computer technology, psychology for stimuli selection and medical expertise for the application of autism screening.

“This technology fills the gap between someone suffering from autism to diagnosis and treatment,” Xu said.

Source: University of Buffalo

Traumatic Stress May Alter Boys’ and Girls’ Brains Differently

A new brain-scanning study has found that traumatic stress affects the brains of adolescent boys and girls differently.

Among youth with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the study found structural differences between the sexes in one part of the insula, a brain region that detects cues from the body and processes emotions and empathy. The insula helps to integrate one’s feelings, actions and several other brain functions, said researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

“The insula appears to play a key role in the development of PTSD,” said the study’s senior author, Victor Carrion, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford. “The difference we saw between the brains of boys and girls who have experienced psychological trauma is important because it may help explain differences in trauma symptoms between sexes.”

People with PTSD may experience flashbacks of traumatic events; may avoid places, people, and things that remind them of the trauma; and may suffer a variety of other problems, including social withdrawal and difficulty sleeping or concentrating.

Prior research has shown that girls who experienced trauma are more likely to develop PTSD than boys who experience trauma, but scientists have been unable to determine why.

For the new study, researchers conducted MRI scans of the brains of 59 children between the ages of nine and 17.  According to the researchers, 30 of the study participants — 14 girls and 16 boys — had trauma symptoms, while the remaining 29 — a control group of 15 girls and 14 boys — did not.

Of the traumatized participants, five had experienced one episode of trauma, while the remaining 25 had experienced two or more episodes or had been exposed to chronic trauma.

The researchers report they saw no differences in brain structure between boys and girls in the control group.

However, among the traumatized boys and girls, they saw differences in a portion of the insula called the anterior circular sulcus. This brain region had larger volume and surface area in traumatized boys than in boys in the control group.

In addition, the region’s volume and surface area were smaller in girls with trauma than among girls in the control group.

“It is important that people who work with traumatized youth consider the sex differences,” said Megan Klabunde, Ph.D., the study’s lead author and an instructor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. “Our findings suggest it is possible that boys and girls could exhibit different trauma symptoms and that they might benefit from different approaches to treatment.”

The insula normally changes during childhood and adolescence, with smaller insula volume typically seen as children and teenagers grow older. The findings imply that traumatic stress could contribute to accelerated cortical aging of the insula in girls who develop PTSD, according to Klabunde.

“There are some studies suggesting that high levels of stress could contribute to early puberty in girls,” she said.

The researchers also noted that their work may help scientists understand how experiencing trauma could play into differences between the sexes in regulating emotions.

“By better understanding sex differences in a region of the brain involved in emotion processing, clinicians and scientists may be able to develop sex-specific trauma and emotion dysregulation treatments,” the researchers said in the study, which was published in Depression and Anxiety.

To better understand the findings, the researchers said what’s needed next are longitudinal studies following traumatized young people of both sexes over time.

Source: Stanford University Medical Center

Bullied Kids May Have Double the Risk of Being Overweight at 18

Childhood victims of bullying have nearly double the risk of being overweight at 18 years of age compared to non-bullied children, according to a new study by researchers at King’s College London.

“Bullying is commonly associated with mental health problems, but there is little research examining the physical health of bullied children,” said Dr. Andrea Danese at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London.

“Our study shows that bullied children are more likely to be overweight as young adults, and that they become overweight independent of their genetic liability and after experiencing victimisation.”

Earlier research by King’s College revealed that children who had been bullied while growing up in the 1960s were more likely to be obese at the age of 45, yet it remained unclear whether these long-term effects were present earlier in life.

For the new study, the researchers investigated whether bullying in a modern context would have similar effects on weight, particularly since bullying takes on different forms today (e.g. cyberbullying) than it did in the 1960s.

The environment children grow up in today has also changed, with unhealthy food more readily available and sedentary lifestyles more common.

The researchers evaluated data from the Environment Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, which has followed more than 2,000 children in England and Wales in 1994-1995 from birth to age 18. They assessed bullying victimization in primary school and early secondary school by interviewing mothers and children three different times as the children turned seven, 10 and 12 years of age.

When the children were 18 years old, the researchers measured their body mass index (BMI) and waist-hip ratio, an indicator of abdominal fat.

The findings showed that 28 percent of children in the study had been bullied in either primary school or secondary school (defined as transitory bullying), and 13 percent had been bullied at both primary and secondary school (defined as chronic bullying).

Victims of chronic bullying were 1.7 times more likely to be overweight as young adults than non-bullied children (29 percent prevalence compared to 20 percent). Bullied children also had a higher BMI and waist-hip ratio at the age of 18.

These associations were independent of other environmental risk factors (including socioeconomic status, food insecurity in the home, child maltreatment, low IQ and poor mental health). Also, for the first time, the study showed that children who were chronically bullied became overweight independent of their genetic risk of being overweight.

Finally, at the time of victimization, bullied children were not more likely to be overweight than non-bullied children, indicating that overweight children were not simply more likely to fall victim to bullying.

“Although we cannot definitively say that bullying victimization causes individuals to become overweight, ruling out alternative explanations, such as genetic liability, strengthens the likelihood that this is the case,” said researcher Jessie Baldwin, also from the IoPPN at King’s. “If the association is causal, preventing bullying could help to reduce the prevalence of overweight in the population.

“As well as preventing bullying, our findings emphasize the importance of supporting bullied children to prevent them from becoming overweight, which could include interventions aimed at promoting exercise and healthy eating. Our data suggest that such interventions should start early in life.”

The findings are published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

Source: King’s College London

Making Exercise Fun for Kids with Autism, ADHD

The most effective way to help children with autism, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and Tourette syndrome get more exercise is to make it fun, according to a small international study that surveyed 132 adult caretakers of children with neurodevelopmental disorders.

Focusing on an activity or sport that comes easily to the children is another top motivator for staying physically active. In fact, lack of skill was found to be a much larger deterrent than more concrete barriers such as financial and transportation limitations.

“We found that a child having fun was a much greater indicator of how likely he or she was to continue exercising,” said first author Matthew Lustig, senior medical student at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

“In targeting interventions that increase exercise, creating more cost-effective options may not be as necessary as creating more fun options.”

The information from his survey was presented on a poster at the American Medical Association Research Symposium in Orlando, Florida.

Participant recruitment was enabled by an Internet questionnaire distributed via Facebook to a wide range of groups associated with neurodevelopmental disorders. This approach allowed for national and international participation from adults living with individuals with a broad spectrum of neurodevelopmental disorders.

The most prevalent disorders included autism, intellectual disability, ADHD, and Tourette syndrome. The young people in their homes were a median age of 17 years of age; 57 percent were male; and the vast majority were white.

The caretakers reported that their go-to sources for exercise information were the Internet, family, and friends. However, they did say that they would like their child’s physician to answer their exercise-related questions.

The survey left Lustig with several questions he plans to pursue, including why pediatricians weren’t considered the caretakers’ first go-to source.

There was a strong belief in the neurological benefits of exercise. In fact, a large majority of the respondents said they believed that regular exercise would help prevent or delay complications of neurodevelopmental disorders and provide short- and long-term benefits for their child’s physical, emotional, and social well-being.

The survey respondents reported plenty of exercise among their children with neurodevelopmental disorders.

According to the survey, the young people generally exercised five days per week for about 100 minutes daily, with cardiovascular activities like basketball, cycling and running as the primary focus. Individuals responding to the survey generally reported being physically active as well.

Source: Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University

Parent-Child Relationship May Influence Risk-Taking as Kids become Adults

New research explores the factors that lead young adults to take significant risks, risks that have the potential to harm themselves or those around them.

Many studies have examined the complex psychology of financial risk-taking. In the new study, researchers determined financial risk-taking in young adults, including going into debt or breaking the law, could be rooted in their childhood relationships with parents.

This study, which appears in the journal Cogent Economics & Finance, was led by researchers at Oklahoma State University.

They used the domain-specific risk-taking scale (DOSPERT) to assess five areas of risk-taking, namely ethical, social, financial, recreational, and health.

The investigators also measured a personality trait known as “sensation-seeking”, which has previously been shown to predict risk-taking and family dynamics, quantifying positive and negative child-parent relationships.

The study found that negative childhood interactions with their mother predicted financial risk-taking among men.

Ethical risk-taking among men was predicted by negative childhood interactions with their father, and with disinhibition (enjoying the feeling of not being in control).

For women, ethical risk-taking was linked to negative childhood interactions with their father, low positive interactions with their mother and their overall susceptibility to boredom.

Interestingly, results suggested that parent-child relationships did not predict the other three types of risk-taking (health, social, and recreational).

The researchers suggest that these kinds of risk-taking may be linked more with the influence of peers, and they argue that further studies are needed establish the extent to which parent and peer relationships affect risk-taking.

It had previously been shown that risk-taking among young children is linked to their interactions with their parents, but this new article shows that family relationships in childhood continue to have an impact in adulthood.

Given the potentially life-changing consequences arising from such risk-taking, understanding what causes it could ultimately result in better outcomes for those most likely to be susceptible to it, conclude the researchers.

Source: Cogenta/AlphaGalileo

Early Planned Birth Tied to Greater Risk for Developmental Problems

Babies delivered by planned birth before the optimal gestational period of 39-40 weeks are more likely to have developmental problems, according to a new study of 153,000 Australian children. The findings are published in the journal Pediatrics.

In recent years there have been significant changes in clinical practice resulting in an increase in planned births before the ideal time at 39-40 weeks’ gestation, particularly through the use of elective caesarean section and induction of labor.

“While the association between being born earlier — lower gestational age — and poorer developmental outcomes is well established, our results revealed that poor development is further exacerbated in the case of planned birth, where a considered decision made to deliver an infant determines gestational age,” said senior author Associate Professor Natasha Nassar at the University of Sydney Menzies Centre for Health Policy.

“Significant changes in clinical practice have seen an increase in planned births before 39-40 completed weeks’ gestation from an increased use of primary and repeat cesarean section and a greater use of labor induction.”

“At a population level this has resulted in a decrease in modal gestational age with planned birth accounting for almost half of births before 39-40 weeks. It is of paramount importance to ensure there are no unintended harms from such a significant shift in clinical practice.”

Using the Australian Early Development Census instrument, children in the study were evaluated in five areas: physical health and wellbeing, language and cognition, social competence, emotional maturity, and general knowledge and communication.

Children scoring in the bottom 10 percent of these domains were considered “developmentally vulnerable,” and children who were “developmentally vulnerable” on two or more domains were classified as “developmentally high risk.”

Compared to children born vaginally following spontaneous labor, the combined adjusted relative risk of being developmentally high risk was 26 percent higher for a planned birth at 37 weeks and 13 percent higher at 38 weeks.

The findings remained after taking into account other important factors linked to poor child development such as socioeconomic disadvantage, lower maternal age, maternal smoking in pregnancy, and fetal growth restriction.

“The timing of planned birth is potentially modifiable, and the benefits of waiting should be communicated to clinicians, mothers, and families,” says study co-author, Dr. Jonathan Morris of the Kolling Institute and the University of Sydney.

The study also reports that the risk of being “developmentally vulnerable” increased with decreasing gestational age.

Compared to children with a gestational age of 40 weeks, the adjusted relative risk of being developmentally high risk was 25 percent higher at 32-33 weeks, 26 percent higher at 34-36 weeks, 17 percent higher at 37 weeks, and six percent higher at 38 weeks.

Compared to children born vaginally following spontaneous labor, the adjusted relative risk of being “developmentally high risk” was seven percent higher for labor induction or pre-labor cesarean section.

“There is an urgent need for strategies to inform more judicious clinical decision making about the timing of planned birth, said lead author Jason Bentley from the Menzies Centre for Health Policy.

“In cases where labor occurs naturally before 39 weeks or planned birth is unavoidable, it is important that there are appropriate interventions and support in early childhood for these potentially vulnerable children.”

Source: University of Sydney