Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines

A novel behavioural screening questionnaire, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), was administered along with Rutter questionnaires to parents and teachers of 403 children drawn from dental and psychiatric clinics. Scores derived from the SDQ and Rutter questionnaires were highly correlated; parent‐teacher correlations for the two sets of measures were comparable or favoured the SDQ. The two sets of measures did not differ in their ability to discriminate between psychiatric and dental clinic attenders. These preliminary findings suggest that the SDQ functions as well as the Rutter questionnaires while offering the following additional advantages: a focus on strengths as well as difficulties; better coverage of inattention, peer relationships, and prosocial behaviour; a shorter format; and a single form suitable for both parents and teachers, perhaps thereby increasing parent‐teacher correlations.

In 1997 in this Journal we published the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test, as a measure of adult “mentalising”. Whilst that test succeeded in discriminating a group of adults with Asperger syndrome (AS) or high‐functioning autism (HFA) from controls, it suffered from several psychometric problems. In this paper these limitations are rectified by revising the test. The Revised Eyes Test was administered to a group of adults with AS or HFA (N= 15) and again discriminated these from a large number of normal controls (N= 239) drawn from different samples. In both the clinical and control groups the Eyes Test was inversely correlated with the Autism Spectrum Quotient (the AQ), a measure of autistic traits in adults of normal intelligence. The Revised Eyes Test has improved power to detect subtle individual differences in social sensitivity.

Background:  Influential studies have cast doubt on the validity of retrospective reports by adults of their own adverse experiences in childhood. Accordingly, many researchers view retrospective reports with scepticism.

Method:  A computer‐based search, supplemented by hand searches, was used to identify studies reported between 1980 and 2001 in which there was a quantified assessment of the validity of retrospective recall of sexual abuse, physical abuse, physical/emotional neglect or family discord, using samples of at least 40. Validity was assessed by means of comparisons with contemporaneous, prospectively obtained, court or clinic or research records; by agreement between retrospective reports of two siblings; and by the examination of possible bias with respect to differences between retrospective and prospective reports in their correlates and consequences. Medium‐ to long‐term reliability of retrospective recall was determined from studies in which the test–retest period extended over at least 6 months.

Results:  Retrospective reports in adulthood of major adverse experiences in childhood, even when these are of a kind that allow reasonable operationalisation, involve a substantial rate of false negatives, and substantial measurement error. On the other hand, although less easily quantified, false positive reports are probably rare. Several studies have shown some bias in retrospective reports. However, such bias is not sufficiently great to invalidate retrospective case‐control studies of major adversities of an easily defined kind. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that little weight can be placed on the retrospective reports of details of early experiences or on reports of experiences that rely heavily on judgement or interpretation.

Conclusion:  Retrospective studies have a worthwhile place in research, but further research is needed to examine possible biases in reporting.

Adolescence is a time of considerable development at the level of behaviour, cognition and the brain. This article reviews histological and brain imaging studies that have demonstrated specific changes in neural architecture during puberty and adolescence, outlining trajectories of grey and white matter development. The implications of brain development for executive functions and social cognition during puberty and adolescence are discussed. Changes at the level of the brain and cognition may map onto behaviours commonly associated with adolescence. Finally, possible applications for education and social policy are briefly considered.

Previous studies have found a subgroup of people with autism or Asperger Syndrome who pass second‐order tests of theory of mind. However, such tests have a ceiling in developmental terms corresponding to a mental age of about 6 years. It is therefore impossible to say if such individuals are intact or impaired in their theory of mind skills. We report the performance of very high functioning adults with autism or Asperger Syndrome on an adult test of theory of mind ability. The task involved inferring the mental state of a person just from the information in photographs of a person's eyes. Relative to age‐matched normal controls and a clinical control group (adults with Tourette Syndrome), the group with autism and Asperger Syndrome were significantly impaired on this task. The autism and Asperger Syndrome sample was also impaired on Happe's strange stories tasks. In contrast, they were unimpaired on two control tasks: recognising gender from the eye region of the face, and recognising basic emotions from the whole face. This provides evidence for subtle mindreading deficits in very high functioning individuals on the autistic continuum.

The Development and Well‐Being Assessment (DAWBA) is a novel package of questionnaires, interviews, and rating techniques designed to generate ICD‐10 and DSM‐IV psychiatric diagnoses on 5‐ldyear‐olds. Nonclinical interviewers administer a structured interview to parents about psychiatric symptoms and resultant impact. When definite symptoms are identified by the structured questions, interviewers use open‐ended questions and supplementary prompts to get parents to describe the problems in their own words. These descriptions are transcribed verbatim by the interviewers but are not rated by them. A similar interview is administered to 1 l‐16‐year‐olds. Teachers complete a brief questionnaire covering the main conduct, emotional, and hyperactivity symptoms and any resultant impairment. The different sorts of information are brought together by a computer program that also predicts likely diagnoses. These computer‐generated summary sheets and diagnoses form a convenient starting point for experienced clinical raters, who decide whether to accept or overturn the computer diagnosis (or lack of diagnosis) in the light of their review of all the data, including transcripts. In the present study, the DAWBA was administered to community (N= 491) and clinic (N= 39) samples. There was excellent discrimination between community and clinic samples in rates of diagnosed disorder. Within the community sample, subjects with and without diagnosed disorders differed markedly in external characteristics and prognosis. In the clinic sample, there was substantial agreement between DAWBA and case note diagnoses, though the DAWBA diagnosed more comorbid disorders. The use of screening questions and skip rules greatly reduced interview length by allowing many sections to be omitted with very little loss of positive information. Overall, the DAWBA successfully combined the cheapness and simplicity of respondent‐based measures with the clinical persuasiveness of investigator‐based diagnoses. The DAWBA has considerable potential as an epidemiological measure, and may prove to be of clinical value too.

Chúng tôi điểm qua những nghiên cứu gần đây về việc trình bày, phân loại học và dịch tễ học của các rối loạn tâm thần hành vi và cảm xúc ở trẻ em mẫu giáo (trẻ em từ 2 đến 5 tuổi), tập trung vào năm nhóm rối loạn tâm thần phổ biến nhất ở trẻ: rối loạn tăng động giảm chú ý, rối loạn chống đối và hành vi, rối loạn lo âu và rối loạn trầm cảm. Chúng tôi xem xét các phương pháp khác nhau để phân loại sự bất thường trong hành vi và cảm xúc ở trẻ mẫu giáo, xác định ranh giới giữa sự thay đổi bình thường và biểu hiện có ý nghĩa lâm sàng. Trong khi nhấn mạnh đến những hạn chế của các tiêu chuẩn chẩn đoán DSM‐IV hiện tại trong việc xác định rối loạn tâm thần ở trẻ mẫu giáo và xem xét các phương pháp chẩn đoán thay thế, chúng tôi cũng đưa ra bằng chứng ủng hộ độ tin cậy và hiệu lực của các tiêu chí phù hợp với sự phát triển để chẩn đoán các rối loạn tâm thần ở trẻ từ hai tuổi trở lên. Dù nghiên cứu về tâm thần học mẫu giáo còn tương đối thiếu so với các nghiên cứu dịch tễ học về rối loạn tâm thần ở trẻ lớn hơn, bằng chứng hiện tại đã cho thấy khá thuyết phục rằng tỷ lệ của các rối loạn tâm thần thường gặp và mô hình đi cùng nhau của chúng trong trẻ mẫu giáo tương tự như những gì được thấy ở tuổi thơ sau này. Chúng tôi xem xét các tác động của các kết luận này đối với nghiên cứu về căn nguyên, phân loại học và sự phát triển sớm của các rối loạn tâm thần, và đối với các phương pháp điều trị nhắm mục tiêu, can thiệp sớm và phòng ngừa ở trẻ nhỏ.

Individual differences in several aspects of eating style have been implicated in the development of weight problems in children and adults, but there are presently no reliable and valid scales that assess a range of dimensions of eating style. This paper describes the development and preliminary validation of a parent‐rated instrument to assess eight dimensions of eating style in children; the Children's Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ). Constructs for inclusion were derived both from the existing literature on eating behaviour in children and adults, and from interviews with parents. They included reponsiveness to food, enjoyment of food, satiety responsiveness, slowness in eating, fussiness, emotional overeating, emotional undereating, and desire for drinks. A large pool of items covering each of these constructs was developed. The number of items was then successively culled through analysis of responses from three samples of families of young children (N= 131; N= 187; N= 218), to produce a 35‐item instrument with eight scales which were internally valid and had good test‐retest reliability. Investigation of variations by gender and age revealed only minimal gender differences in any aspect of eating style. Satiety responsiveness and slowness in eating diminished from age 3 to 8. Enjoyment of food and food responsiveness increased over this age range. The CEBQ should provide a useful measure of eating style for research into the early precursors of obesity or eating disorders. This is especially important in relation to the growing evidence for the heritability of obesity, where good measurement of the associated behavioural phenotype will be crucial in investigating the contribution of inherited variations in eating behaviour to the process of weight gain.