Parent involvement in novice teen driving: rationale, evidence of effects, and potential for enhancing graduated driver licensing effectiveness. (33/524)

Motor-vehicle crash rates are highly elevated immediately after licensure and then decline gradually over a period of years. Young age, risk taking, and inexperience contribute to the problem, but inexperience is particularly important early on. Driving is like other complex, skilled behaviors in which subtle improvements in perception and judgment develop gradually over a period of years. After all, safe driving is more a matter of attention and perception than physical management of the vehicle. Inexperience is particularly linked to driving performance and safety outcomes under certain driving conditions, with driving at night and with teen passengers as the most important cases. Surprisingly, driving outcomes do not appear to be affected by the pre-license training or supervised practice driving. Given the limits of training, safety effects can best be achieved by countermeasures that delay licensure or limit novice teen driving under high risk driving conditions while novices gain experience and develop safety competence. The two complementary approaches of Graduated Driver Licensing policies and parent management have been shown to provide safety effects by limiting the driving conditions of novice teenagers.  (+info)

Developmental trajectories of male physical violence and theft: relations to neurocognitive performance. (34/524)

CONTEXT: Neurocognitive mechanisms have long been hypothesized to influence developmental trajectories of antisocial behavior. However, studies examining this association tend to aggregate a variety of problem behaviors that may be differently affected by neurocognitive deficits. OBJECTIVE: To describe the developmental trajectories of physical violence and theft from adolescence to adulthood, their associations, and the neurocognitive characteristics of individuals following different patterns of trajectory association. DESIGN: Accelerated cohort-sequential, longitudinal design. SETTING: Rutgers Health and Human Development Project. PARTICIPANTS: Six hundred ninety-eight men. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Self-reports of physical violence (ages 12-24 years) and theft (ages 12-31 years) were collected across 5 waves. Neurocognitive performance was assessed with executive function and verbal IQ tests between late adolescence and early adulthood. RESULTS: The majority (55%) of subjects showed an increased frequency of theft during the study period, while only a minority (13%) evinced an increasing frequency of physical violence. Executive function and verbal IQ performance were negatively related to high frequency of physical violence but were unrelated to theft [corrected]. CONCLUSIONS: Developmental trajectories of physical violence and theft during adolescence and early adulthood are different and differently related to neurocognitive functioning. Global indexes of antisocial behavior mask the development of antisocial behavior subtypes and putative causal mechanisms.  (+info)

Incentive-related modulation of cognitive control in healthy, anxious, and depressed adolescents: development and psychopathology related differences. (35/524)

BACKGROUND: Developmental changes in cognitive and affective processes contribute to adolescent risk-taking behavior, emotional intensification, and psychopathology. The current study examined adolescent development of cognitive control processes and their modulation by incentive, in health and psychopathology. Predictions include 1) better cognitive control in adults than adolescents, and in healthy adolescents than anxious and depressed adolescents, and 2) a stronger influence of incentives in adolescents than adults, and in healthy adolescents than their depressed and anxious counterparts. METHODS: Antisaccadic eye movement parameters, which provide a measure of cognitive control, were collected during a reward antisaccade task that included parameterized incentive levels. Participants were 20 healthy adults, 30 healthy adolescents, 16 adolescents with an anxiety disorder, and 11 adolescents with major depression. Performance accuracy and saccade latency were analyzed to test both developmental and psychopathology hypotheses. RESULTS: Development and psychopathology group differences in cognitive control were found. Specifically, adults performed better than healthy adolescents, and healthy adolescents than anxious and depressed adolescents. Incentive improved accuracy for all groups; however, incremental increases were not sufficiently large to further modulate performance. Incentives also affected saccade latencies, pushing healthy adolescent latencies to adult levels, while being less effective in adolescents with depression or anxiety. This latter effect was partially mediated by anxiety symptom severity. CONCLUSIONS: Current findings evidence the modulation of cognitive control processes by incentives. While seen in both healthy adults and healthy adolescents, this modulatory effect was stronger in youth. While anxious and depressed adolescents exhibited improved cognitive control under incentives, this effect was smaller than that in healthy adolescents. These findings suggest differential incentive and/or cognitive control processing in anxiety and depression, and across development. Differences could result from disorder specific, or combined developmental and pathological mechanisms.  (+info)

Towards a Chinese conception of adolescent development in a migration context. (36/524)

Although there are many well-known theories of adolescent development in the West, there is a notable lack of theory with empirical support to understand the process and outcome of Chinese adolescent development. This paper attempts to advance a Chinese conception of adolescent development in a migration context. A qualitative study approach was used to explore the experiences and views of 19 Chinese-Canadian adolescents from Hong Kong and ten of their parents. The findings indicate that parents and adolescents co-construct the dominant theme of "covert parental control" in the adolescent development process, and the concept of "self in relational networks" as the adolescent development outcome. Based on the developmental experiences of these Chinese-Canadian adolescents, a culturally sensitive model of Chinese adolescent development is proposed. This model incorporates culture and migration as two essential components of the framework for a theory regarding Chinese adolescent development. It acknowledges the experience of Chinese-Canadian immigrants, takes account of the participants' personal meanings, and incorporates the indigenous Chinese cultural concepts of bao (reciprocity), guan (guidance), and guanxi (relationship).  (+info)

Personality at ages 16 and 17 and drinking problems at ages 18 and 25: genetic analyses of data from Finn Twin16-25. (37/524)

We enrolled more than 3500 same-sex twinsfrom 5 consecutive Finnish birth cohorts into a longitudinal study as each cohort reached age 16. Twins completed the Psychopathic Deviate (Pd) Scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory at baseline, Sensation Seeking Scale items as each cohort reached age 17, and later, at average ages 18.5 and 25, the Rutgers Alcohol Problem Index (RAPI). Using raw maximum likelihood estimation, we fit a Cholesky model to the 4 variables assessed at 4 ages across the 4 twin types; we estimated genetic and environmental influences on the stability of alcohol problems across development and the genetic and environmental contributions to predictive correlations between adolescent personality and later alcohol-related behavior problems. With one exception, the phenotypic, genetic, and environmental correlations were very similar for males and females. The exception was that the lagged associations of Pd and RAPI reflect a higher genetic correlation among males than females and a higher environmental correlation among females than males. Our analyses suggest that developmental changes underlying variation in alcohol problems from late adolescence to early adulthood differ for males and females. In males, the main change is decreased variation due to shared environmental effects; the magnitude of genetic effects is stable over time, and the high genetic correlation, .95, suggests that the same genetic influences are important at both ages. Among females, in contrast, genetic influences decline in magnitude from age 18 to 25, and at least part of the genetic effect evident at age 25 differs from the genetic effect evident at age 18.  (+info)

Recent advances in the aetiology of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. (38/524)

The aetiology of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) is still unknown despite many years of research effort. Theories on AIS's aetiology have included mechanical, hormonal, metabolic, neuromuscular, growth, and genetic abnormalities. Amongst these, some factors may be epiphenomena rather than the cause itself. Other factors may even contribute to curve progression, rather than curve initiation. Current views maintain that AIS is a multifactorial disease with genetic predisposing factors [Lowe et al. in J Bone Joint Surg [Am] 82:1157-1168, 2000]. With improvements in diagnostic methods, imaging and genomics, there has been considerable recent work on aetiology. This review aims to bring readers up-to-date with the latest developments in scoliosis research.  (+info)

Energy substrate utilization during prolonged exercise with and without carbohydrate intake in preadolescent and adolescent girls. (39/524)

Little information is available on energy metabolism during exercise in girls, particularly the contribution of exogenous carbohydrate (CHO(exo)). The purpose of this study was to determine substrate utilization during exercise with and without CHO(exo) intake in healthy girls. Twelve-yr-old preadolescent (YG; n = 12) and 14-yr-old adolescent (OG; n = 10) girls consumed flavored water (WT) or (13)C-enriched 6% CHO (CT) while cycling for 60 min at approximately 70% maximal aerobic power (Vo(2max)). Substrate utilization was calculated for the final 15 min of exercise. CHO(exo) decreased fat oxidation by approximately 50% in YG but not in OG (P < 0.001) and decreased endogenous CHO oxidation by approximately 15% in OG but not in YG (P = 0.006). Endogenous CHO oxidation was lower in YG than in OG regardless of trial (P < or = 0.01), whereas fat oxidation was higher in YG only during WT (P < 0.001). CHO(exo) oxidation rate was similar between YG and OG (7.1 +/- 0.5 and 6.8 +/- 0.4 mg.kg(-1).min(-1), respectively, P = 0.67), contributing approximately 19% to total energy expenditure. Serum estradiol levels in all girls correlated with fat (r = -0.50 to -0.59, P = 0.03 to 0.005) and endogenous CHO oxidation (r = 0.50 to 0.63, P = 0.03 to 0.005) but not with CHO(exo) oxidation (r = -0.09, P = 0.71). We conclude that CHO(exo) influences endogenous substrate utilization in an age-dependent manner in healthy girls but that total CHO(exo) oxidation during exercise is not different between YG and OG. Our results also point to potential sex-related differences in energy substrate utilization even during childhood.  (+info)

Why do children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families suffer from poor health when they reach adulthood? A life-course study. (40/524)

The authors investigated what risk factors contribute to an excess risk of poor adult health among children who experience socioeconomic disadvantage. Data came from 1,037 children born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1972-1973, who were followed from birth to age 32 years (2004-2005). Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) was measured at multiple points between birth and age 15 years. Risk factors evaluated included a familial liability to poor health, childhood/adolescent health characteristics, low childhood intelligence quotient (IQ), exposure to childhood maltreatment, and adult SES. Adult health outcomes evaluated at age 32 years were major depressive disorder, anxiety disorders, tobacco dependence, alcohol or drug dependence, and clustering of cardiovascular disease risk factors. Results showed that low childhood SES was associated with an increased risk of substance dependence and poor physical health in adulthood (for tobacco dependence, sex-adjusted relative risk (RR) = 2.27, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.41, 3.65; for alcohol or drug dependence, RR = 2.11, 95% CI: 1.16, 3.84; for cardiovascular risk factor status, RR = 2.55, 95% CI: 1.46, 4.46). Together, the risk factors studied here accounted for 55-67% of poor health outcomes among adults exposed to low SES as children. No single risk factor emerged as the prime explanation, suggesting that the processes mediating the link between childhood low SES and adult poor health are multifactorial.  (+info)