E.g., child cognitive skills or maternal education, each of which has a well-established history of predictive significance for multiple aspects of social competence and psychopathology; Masten et al., 2006). This possibility is methodological, and not substantive, and stems from overlapping constructs, items, or informants that may produce spurious associations. That said, children’s social skills relate to their cognitive skills (Bornstein, Haynes, O’Reilly, Painter, 1996; Bornstein, Haynes, Painter, 1998), and children with behavioral adjustment problems have been shown consistently to suffer deficits in cognitive skills. Intelligence has proven to be positively related to a wide array of social competenciesDev Psychopathol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2012 August 06.Bornstein et al.Pageand negatively related to externalizing and internalizing behaviors across childhood (Garner, Jones, Palmer, 1994; Nelson, Martin, Hodge, Havill, Kamphaus, 1999; Owens, Shaw, Giovannelli, Garcia, Yaggi, 1999). Rates of language impairment, for example, reach 24 to 65 in samples of children identified as exhibiting disruptive behaviors (Benasich, Curtiss, Tallal, 1993), and as many as 59 to 80 of preschool- and school-age children identified as exhibiting disruptive behaviors also exhibit language delays (Beitchman, Nair, Clegg, Ferguson, Patel, 1996; Brinton Fujiki, 1993; Stevenson, Richman, Graham, 1985). Adjustment-disordered children and adolescents notoriously perform poorly on standardized tests of IQ (Moffitt Lynam, 1994), associations that obtain after controlling for ethnicity and socioeconomic status (Evans, 1996; Lynam, Moffitt, StouthamerLoeber, 1993). Therefore, in addition to child age, we controlled children’s AZD-8835 biological activity general intelligence. We also controlled maternal education in assessing developmental cascades among children’s social competence and their behavioral adjustment. Because we used parents’ reports, which may be influenced by parents’ own ability or by their social desirability (Bornstein, 2010), we also controlled maternal social desirability of responding. We examined whether these leading candidates for third-variable common causes accounted for any observed developmental cascade effects. We expected that meaningful developmental cascades would prove robust to the inclusion of control variables.NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptThis StudyOne major step in the direction of addressing unique longitudinal relations between social competence and externalizing and internalizing behavioral adjustment is to untangle direction, specificity, and source of effects between them over and above their covariation and stability. We took this step in a developmental design that spanned the interval between ages 4 and 14. We chose to begin at 4 years because it is well before the start of formal schooling and is almost the L868275 manufacturer earliest age at which social competence can be measured and behavioral adjustment problems make themselves known. For its part adolescence marks a time of increasing salience and interpersonal sensitivity as in peer relationships. Altogether this period brackets many physical, cognitive, emotional, and social developmental transformations. For example, this interval encompasses the transition to school, during which time children learn to cope with academic demands, adjust to new daily routines, and develop new relationships with classmates. We used path.E.g., child cognitive skills or maternal education, each of which has a well-established history of predictive significance for multiple aspects of social competence and psychopathology; Masten et al., 2006). This possibility is methodological, and not substantive, and stems from overlapping constructs, items, or informants that may produce spurious associations. That said, children’s social skills relate to their cognitive skills (Bornstein, Haynes, O’Reilly, Painter, 1996; Bornstein, Haynes, Painter, 1998), and children with behavioral adjustment problems have been shown consistently to suffer deficits in cognitive skills. Intelligence has proven to be positively related to a wide array of social competenciesDev Psychopathol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2012 August 06.Bornstein et al.Pageand negatively related to externalizing and internalizing behaviors across childhood (Garner, Jones, Palmer, 1994; Nelson, Martin, Hodge, Havill, Kamphaus, 1999; Owens, Shaw, Giovannelli, Garcia, Yaggi, 1999). Rates of language impairment, for example, reach 24 to 65 in samples of children identified as exhibiting disruptive behaviors (Benasich, Curtiss, Tallal, 1993), and as many as 59 to 80 of preschool- and school-age children identified as exhibiting disruptive behaviors also exhibit language delays (Beitchman, Nair, Clegg, Ferguson, Patel, 1996; Brinton Fujiki, 1993; Stevenson, Richman, Graham, 1985). Adjustment-disordered children and adolescents notoriously perform poorly on standardized tests of IQ (Moffitt Lynam, 1994), associations that obtain after controlling for ethnicity and socioeconomic status (Evans, 1996; Lynam, Moffitt, StouthamerLoeber, 1993). Therefore, in addition to child age, we controlled children’s general intelligence. We also controlled maternal education in assessing developmental cascades among children’s social competence and their behavioral adjustment. Because we used parents’ reports, which may be influenced by parents’ own ability or by their social desirability (Bornstein, 2010), we also controlled maternal social desirability of responding. We examined whether these leading candidates for third-variable common causes accounted for any observed developmental cascade effects. We expected that meaningful developmental cascades would prove robust to the inclusion of control variables.NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptThis StudyOne major step in the direction of addressing unique longitudinal relations between social competence and externalizing and internalizing behavioral adjustment is to untangle direction, specificity, and source of effects between them over and above their covariation and stability. We took this step in a developmental design that spanned the interval between ages 4 and 14. We chose to begin at 4 years because it is well before the start of formal schooling and is almost the earliest age at which social competence can be measured and behavioral adjustment problems make themselves known. For its part adolescence marks a time of increasing salience and interpersonal sensitivity as in peer relationships. Altogether this period brackets many physical, cognitive, emotional, and social developmental transformations. For example, this interval encompasses the transition to school, during which time children learn to cope with academic demands, adjust to new daily routines, and develop new relationships with classmates. We used path.
