TV and video game distractions linked to sleep loss in boys with Autism (ADS/ADD)

Exposure to television and video games could play a role in the sleep problems of children with autism, new research suggests.

Boys with the neurodevelopmental disorder who have TVs and game consoles in their bedrooms get less sleep than other boys with equal screen access, the study authors found.

"If parents of children with autism are noticing that their child struggles with sleep, they might consider monitoring—and perhaps limiting—pre-bedtime exposure" to video games and TV, said study lead author Christopher Engelhardt, a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Missouri Thompson Center for Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Columbia, Mo.

It's not clear if the boys in the study get too little sleep, or if they're watching TV and playing video games because they have trouble sleeping.

The findings, reported online Nov. 18 in the journal Pediatrics, don't provide insight into whether the positive aspects of TV watching and video game playing might offset any effect on sleep.

It's estimated that 1 out of every 88 U.S. children has an autism spectrum disorder, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Symptoms include problems with communication and socialization, and can range from mild, as in Asperger's syndrome, to severe autism. Boys face a much higher risk of autism than girls.

Certain Sleep problems appear to be a hallmark of autism.
"Some sleep problems, such as taking longer to fall asleep and waking up at night, occur in 50 percent to 80 percent of children with autism," Engelhardt said.

"The reasons for these problems are numerous, including trouble with sleep cycles and regulating hormones that are important and necessary for sleep."

Compared to typically developing children, children with autism also seem to be particularly drawn to TV and video games, Engelhardt pointed out.

"We suspect that this is the case, particularly with video games, because the environments, emotions and social interactions are much easier to control and interpret than in real life," he said.

For this study, the researchers wanted to explore the possible impact of TV-watching and gaming on the sleeping patterns of kids with autism.

They surveyed parents of 49 boys with an autism spectrum disorder, 38 with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and 41 who had neither disorder. The boys were between 8 and 17 years old.

When computers were in the bedroom, sleep differences were significant: about 7 hours for boys with autism compared to more than 8.5 hours for the others.

Boys with autism and a bedroom TV also got less sleep: fewer than 8 hours a night compared to about 8.5 hours for the other boys.

However, the parents weren't asked questions designed to determine if the kids weren't getting enough sleep. And the research doesn't prove that media use deprives these boys of sleep.

It's possible that boys with autism and easy access to TV and video games need less sleep, Engelhardt said. Or they might watch and play because they are awake more.

Still, it's known that sleep disturbances can worsen problematic behaviors of children with autism and interfere with learning and family functioning, the authors noted.

Sleep problems are "one of the top complaints in families who are dealing with autism," said Matthew Belmonte, a neuroscientist at Groden Center in Providence, R.I.

But parents, not professionals, are key to figuring out the proper role of TV and video games in a child's life, added Belmonte, who was not involved with the study.

"You don't need an M.D. or Ph.D. to tell you when a child is just relaxing with a video game or when it's keeping that child awake unnecessarily."

Engelhardt said he enjoys playing video games himself and isn't on a crusade against them. Video games and TV can benefit children with autism, he noted.

"Researchers have known for a long time that video games are excellent teachers, so it's possible that these media can be used to develop and shape the types of behaviours generally valued by society, such as behaviours intended to help and assist others," Engelhardt said.

It's even possible, he added, that relaxing video games and TV shows could help kids with autism sleep better.

Boys suffer from their fathers' absence and long working hours

Fathers' extremely long working hours can be detrimental to their sons´ wellbeing.

This is the key finding of a longitudinal study by Jianghong Li (senior researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center) and four Australian co-authors, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

The longitudinal study is based on data of more than 1,400 children in Western Australia. Around 19 percent of Western Australian fathers work 55 or more hours per week when their children are 5 years of age.

Almost 20 percent of Australian fathers work so long when their children are 8 years old.

Boys whose fathers worked 55 or more hours per week later exhibited more delinquent and aggressive behaviours than boys whose fathers worked fewer hours.

Their fathers' long work hours did not appear to affect girls' behaviours.

Mothers' work hours did not seem to matter, although few Australian mothers worked long hours and no firm conclusions can be drawn yet from this comparison.

The culture of working long hours which has crept into many jobs in the new economy should be the next policy frontier.

In Germany 15 percent of fathers of children with similar age (3-4) work 55 or more hours per week in 2011.

The data come from the cohort study called "Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort Study" well-known under the name Raine Study. The Study has been following children from pregnancy to adulthood.

More information: Johnson, S. et al. Mothers' and Fathers' Work Hours, Child Gender and Behavior in Middle Childhood. Journal of Marriage and Family, 2013, 75: 56-74.

Boys, perceive sadness of depressed parents

Children of depressed parents pick up on their parents' sadness—whether mom or dad realizes their mood or not.

A new University of Michigan study indicates that children who have at least one parent suffering from depression are very skilled at picking up on facial cues.

Boys living in this environment are highly sensitive to facial expressions of sadness, said Nestor Lopez-Duran, assistant professor of psychology and one the study's authors.

Researchers analyzed data on 104 children ages 7-13, of whom about 60 percent were at high-risk for depression because at least one of their parents were diagnosed with depression.

The participants looked at pictures of facial expressions that varied from neutral to sadness and anger, or viewed images of faces morphing from anger to sadness.

After each picture was shown, the children indicated whether the face showed sadness, anger or no emotion.

Lopez-Duran said high-risk boys were more sensitive to subtle expressions of sadness than their peers, including high-risk girls. There are a few reasons why this may be the case, he said.

There's growing evidence suggesting that the underlying processes that put kids at risk for depression and other conditions may be different for boys and girls.

It may be that high sensitivity to sadness influences how boys see their social world, which may make them less social in important situations, Lopez-Duran said.

For instance, unlike girls, who tend to be highly social, boys are less likely to use others as sources of comfort when they are sad.

On the other hand, it's also possible that this unique skill does not reflect an underlying vulnerability, he said.

This skill may be an adaptive strategy that develops in response to the environment. Specifically, boys are more likely than girls to receive harsh punishment, and parental depression increases the risk of using harsh punishment.

"It is possible that these high-risk boys developed this skill in order to reduce the possibility of getting harsh punishment by essentially recognizing when mom or dad is upset and getting out of the way," Lopez-Duran said.

The takeaway message is that boys of depressed parents appear to be very perceptive of sadness, he said. In fact, these boys may be able to tell when parents are upset even when parents think they are not showing signs.

The findings appear in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry: onlinelibrary.wile… e-5/issuetoc

Science and Maths: Playing 'boys' games help Girls

The observation that males appear to be superior to females in some fields of academic study has prompted a wealth of research hoping to shed light on whether this is attributable to nature or nurture.

Although there is no difference in general intelligence between the sexes, studies over the past 35 years have consistently found that overall men do much better in tests of spatial ability than women.

This difference may have something to do with why there are still fewer women in tertiary education studying science, technology, engineering and math – all subjects where it helps to have good spatial ability.

More in-depth assessment, however, reveals that this might be an over-simplification of the facts.

A new review, published in Springer's journal Sex Roles, sheds light on one of the factors contributing to these gender differences in spatial ability, that of gender-roles.

Although children are born either male or female, individuals differ in their degree of masculine and feminine identification and endorsement of masculine and feminine gender roles.


The review was carried out by David Reilly and David Neumann from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.

Reilly and Neumann note that studies in their review reported finding larger within-gender variations in spatial ability than between-gender.

This then led them to look more specifically at the data on variables within males and females which might be able to explain this.

The researchers analysed twelve studies which had looked specifically at one aspect of spatial ability, namely mental rotation, in high school pupils, college attendees and young adults.

Collectively these studies showed a significant association between masculinity and mental rotation performance for both men and women.

In other words, men and women with either a strong masculine or androgynous gender-identity fared better in mental rotation tasks.

The authors suggest that it is the considerable variation in the levels of typically masculine and feminine traits and behaviours, that children of the same sex develop, which account for the inter-gender variability.

Masculine identification leads to cultivation of mathematical and scientific skills whereas feminine identification facilitates verbal and language abilities.

These gender-roles are not mutually exclusive, with some children of both genders developing a healthy integration of both roles.

Development of spatial ability is refined through play and recreational activities, with traditionally masculine activities helping to promote development of spatial ability.

Therefore improving girls' performance in subjects which require good spatial ability may involve the deliberate inclusion of what are commonly seen as stereo-typically male activities into their daily lives, rather than encouraging sex-segregation of activities.

The authors conclude: "We have seen many changes in society's beliefs about gender equality in the intervening decades since Sharon Churnin Nash (Stanford University) proposed her gender-role mediation hypothesis of intellectual development in 1979.

However, for spatial ability at least, this association seems as relevant today as when the claim was first made."

More information: Reilly, D. and Neumann, D.L. (2013), Gender-role differences in spatial ability: a meta-analytic review, Sex Roles. DOI 10.1007/s11199-013-0269-0

Greek Physician Told Everyone Not to Carry Around Their Baby Boys

The ancient Greek physician Soranus thought that babies, especially boys, should not be carried until four months of age.

Carrying posed the risk of severe testicular injury, Soranus thought.

Today we worry about raising children who aren’t well-adjusted; the Greeks worried about raising children who weren’t eunuchs.

This bias against carrying continued through medieval times.

Meanwhile, at the same time Soranus pronounced this, the many hunter-and-gatherer societies south of him in Africa were regularly carrying their infants. They had always carried their infants. Given their lifestyle, it was essential.

John Whiting

There is some logic here; the anthropologist John Whiting established that infants in cold climates are more likely to be swaddled and put down in a cradle, while those in hot climates are more likely to be carried in a sling.

But once we could control the temperature indoors, we had an infinite amount of choices and a variety of information from well-meaning pseudo-experts.

In the US, for the first half of the 20th century, the medical consensus was something like, “Carry your child? Why are you even touching your child?”

This was an era when experts were telling parents not to kiss their babies. Thankfully most people ignored this dubious advice.

The sudden popularity of slings, beginning in the 1970s, was a radical reversal. It swept away decades of child-rearing wisdom.

If you take the long view all this indecision dates back to a pivot point in human development.

Our hominid ancestors carried their infants without trying, that was the advantage of having a hairy body they could cling to and an opposable toe to assist the infant in gripping.

When they lost both, they squandered an extremely efficient method of child care. Suddenly, parents had to think about what to do with this helpless creature.

Some invented slings, mainly for convenience, to allow them to work and function in a hand-to-mouth environment.

In a sense, the search for infant daycare began with the moment, millions of years ago, that those hominid infants no longer stuck to their parents. In those societies the extended family (sisters, granny, aunts, etc) was readily available to perform this service.

It’s always tempting to see the present as the final point in a journey. It is convenient to believe that we have corrected the mistakes of the past.

We now understand that babies have basic socio-emotional needs; we let ourselves pick up our babies; we carry them when they want to be carried.

The real answer is that we have more time and energy to spend on a small number of children and are charged with guilt that they will become 'psychologically damaged' if we do not attend to their demands for attention.

Questions and Answers to child-rearing will see-saw wildly as our society changes. So watch this space for emerging theories and possible solutions to questions that have yet to be asked.

Saliva Testing Predicts Aggression in Boys

A new study indicates that a simple saliva test could be an effective tool in predicting violent behaviour.

The pilot study, led by Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and published this week online in the journal Psychiatric Quarterly, suggests a link between salivary concentrations of certain hormones and aggression.

Drew Barzman

Researchers, led by Drew Barzman, MD, a child and adolescent forensic psychiatrist at Cincinnati Children's, collected saliva samples from 17 boys ages 7-9 admitted to the hospital for psychiatric care to identify which children were most likely to show aggression and violence.

The samples, collected three times in one day shortly after admission, were tested for levels of three hormones: testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and cortisol.

The severity and frequency of aggression correlated with the levels of these hormones.

Barzman's team focused on rapid, real-time assessment of violence among child and adolescent inpatients, a common problem in psychiatric units, but he believes a fast and accurate saliva test could eventually have several other applications.

"We believe salivary hormone testing has the potential to help doctors monitor which treatments are working best for their patients," said Barzman. "And because mental health professionals are far more likely to be assaulted on the job than the average worker, it could offer a quick way to anticipate violent behaviour in child psychiatric units. Eventually, we hope this testing might also provide a tool to help improve safety in schools."

For this study, the saliva test was used in combination with other aggressive behavior tools, including the Brief Rating of Aggression by Children and Adolescents (BRACHA) questionnaire, an assessment tool also developed by Barzman's team to predict aggression and violence in the hospital.

"This study sample, while small, gives us the data we need to move forward," added Barzman. "We have more studies planned before we can reach a definitive conclusion, but developing a new tool to help us anticipate violent behaviour is our ultimate goal."

Reference
The Association Between Salivary Hormone Levels and Children’s Inpatient Aggression: A Pilot Study. Psychiatric Quarterly, 2013; DOI: 10.1007/s11126-013-9260-8

Teachers declare: Boys suffer poor body image

Boys increasingly have low self-esteem about their body image, teachers warn.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers claims the promotion of ideal body images is reducing both boys' and girls' confidence in their own bodies.

Last year, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Body Image recommended all children took part in compulsory body image and self-esteem lessons.

The union will discuss the issue of body image among pupils at its annual conference in Liverpool next week.

In a survey of 693 members across the UK, the union found 78% thought girls suffered low self-esteem and 51% thought boys had low confidence in their body image.

In addition, 59% of staff said that worries about body image made female pupils anxious and 30% said it caused anxiety in male pupils.

Some 55% said that girls were "ultra-sensitive" to comments about their appearance and 27% said boys took comments to heart.

Diets
Pressure to achieve the perfect body meant girls were likely to go on a diet, according to 54% of staff and boys were prone to start excessive exercise regimes, said 30% of those surveyed.

Asked where the pressure came from, 94% of those surveyed said they believed the media, including television, magazines, music videos, adverts and social media was the biggest influence on female pupils and also on male pupils (68%).

Peers of the same sex were also highlighted as a key cause of pressure on female pupils to look good by 83% of respondents and on male pupils by 54%.

A teacher at a secondary academy in Wandsworth, London, said: "I find that boys who are shorter than their peers are extremely sensitive and manifest either disruptive behaviour or are very withdrawn."

One early years teacher in England said: "I work with four to five-year-olds and some say things like, 'I can't eat cheese, it will make me fat!'"

A teacher at a secondary school in Northern Ireland said: "In my year 11 GCSE English class, the girls all openly admitted to feeling pressure about body image and many of the boys confessed to it too, although they said that usually they wouldn't admit to it affecting them.

A head of department at a secondary school in Exeter said: "Digital and social media are a nightmare with 'anonymous' sites that slate students in the most appalling terms on their appearance, personality and anything judge-able."

"Despite knowing about airbrushing, the girls still feel the need to aspire to unrealistic notions of beauty."

Read more of this article here

Why do girls get better grades in elementary school than boys

Why do girls get better grades in elementary school than boys—even when they perform worse on standardized tests? 

New research from the University of Georgia and Columbia University published in the current issue of Journal of Human Resources suggests that it's because of their classroom behaviour, which may lead teachers to assign girls higher grades than their male counterparts.

"The skill that matters the most in regards to how teachers graded their students is what we refer to as 'approaches toward learning,'" said Christopher Cornwell, head of economics in the UGA Terry College of Business and one of the study's authors.

"You can think of 'approaches to learning' as a rough measure of what a child's attitude toward school is: It includes six items that rate the child's attentiveness, task persistence, eagerness to learn, learning independence, flexibility and organization.

I think that anybody who's a parent of boys and girls can tell you that girls are more of all of that."

The study, co-authored by Cornwell and David Mustard at UGA and Jessica Van Parys at Columbia, analyzed data on more than 5,800 students from kindergarten through fifth grade.

It examined students' performance on standard tests in three categories—reading, math and science—linking test scores to teachers' assessments of their students' progress, both academically and more broadly.

The data show, for the first time, that gender disparities in teacher grades start early and uniformly favour girls.

In every subject area, boys are represented in grade distributions below where their test scores would predict.

The authors attribute this misalignment to what they called non-cognitive skills, or "how well each child was engaged in the classroom, how often the child externalized or internalized problems, how often the child lost control and how well the child developed interpersonal skills."

They even report evidence of a grade bonus for boys with test scores and behavior like their girl counterparts.

This difference can have long-reaching effects, Cornwell said. 

Read the full article here