Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
New ResearchMaternal Ratings of Attention Problems in ADHD: Evidence for the Existence of a Continuum
Section snippets
Subjects
The subjects in this study are Dutch male twins whose parents voluntarily registered with the Netherlands Twin Registry (NTR).13, 14 The NTR families largely represent the general Dutch population. Based on available data, the average age of the mother and father at birth of the twin is 30.6 and 33.01 years, respectively. From age 7 to 12 years of the twins, the percentage of married parents decreases from 92.3% to 88.1%. Parents' educational and occupational levels are presented in Table 1.
We
Results
Results are compared across the age groups focusing on the best-fitting model, the relative sizes of the latent classes (i.e., class proportions), and the differences across classes with respect to the response patterns on the 11 CBCL attention items and the relation of the classes to the DSM diagnoses.
Discussion
The results of the current analysis show quantitative differences in the AP syndrome of the CBCL in children aged 7 to 12 years. The FMM analyses of the CBCL data reveal similar results as our earlier findings when we used the same approach with SWAN data obtained in the Finnish adolescents.4 The analysis of CBCL AP items shows that the samples consist of three latent classes that are located along correlated continua (severe-, moderate-, and low-scoring AP classes). The severe and moderate
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Cited by (0)
This article was reviewed under and accepted by Ad Hoc Editor Kenneth Towbin, M.D.
This research was supported by Spinozapremie (NWO/SPI 56-464-14192; Twin-family database for behavior genetics and genomics studies (NWO 480-04-004); the VU-CNCR (Centre Neurogenetics/Cognition Research), Developmental Study of Attention Problems in Young Twins (NIMH, RO1 MH58799-03).
This article is the subject of an editorial by Dr. Anita Thapar in this issue.