Thursday, January 10, 2013

Psych studies

 Here's a fun study out of the Netherlands about attention-deficit problems.  Notice what is up here:
1.  We think both genes and environment affect attentional problems, the latter over time.
2.  We thought we had great data and studied it.
3.  We found a huge, deal-breaking problem with our data - before age 12 it was mom-report, after age 12 it was self-report.
3A.  So let's talk about how the data could potentially still be very interesting, because there's this odd male-female difference, and abrupt switches when the data reporting changes.  We don't have any actual evidence for any of it, but it's interesting, don't you think? Why do women 15-30 do that, but not the men so much?
4.  We still think both genes and environment affect attentional problems, but more research is needed.

Another study, perhaps better, from the same publication, this time about youth at ultra-high risk for psychosis.  I was interested that the focus continues to swing toward function and adjustment, rather than how crazy you are, as a measure of illness.  That is all to the good.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The attention-deficit findings and the shift when they go from mother-reported to self-reported sounds perfectly simple to me:

• Mothers get worn out by wiggly little boys, and
• Teenage girls love excuses for not doing schoolwork.

james said...

I think Jim nailed it.