Sixty mothers of four 12-yr-old children described their children's positive and negative characteristics and specific instances of their children's desirable and undesirable social behavior. They rated (a) the environmental versus dispositional basis of their child's behavior, (b) the behavior's probable origins, cross-situational consistency, and temporal stability, (c) the child's controllability, and (d) personal responsibility for engaging in each behavior. As predicted from attribution theory, mothers perceived desirable child behaviors as dispositional and undesirable ones as unstable and situationally caused. Positive personal characteristics were seen as stable and inborn, but negative ones as transitory. Children perceived as difficult to manage, however, were also seen as dispositionally and stably oppositional. Older children were considered more difficult to manage than younger ones, but only their misbehavior was seen as more innately determined. Girls' conduct of all types was considered more dispositional, and sons' characteristics were seen as more stable, especially during adolescence. The results suggest a positive bias in mothers' perceptions of their children, except when they are considered difficult to control.Attribution theory provides a useful perspective for the study of parental perceptions of children (see a similar view by Dix & Grusec, 1985;Dix & Reinhold, 1987;Dix, Ruble, Grusec, & Nixon, 1986). The attributional literature suggests that mothers will not be objective observers of their children's behavior, but will be positively biased under most circumstances, because people attempt to maintain a positive image of themselves and valued others such as family members (

In an affluent society, iron deficiency and depleted iron stores at 1 year may contribute to worse fine motor developmental scores at 6 years, while low mean corpuscular volume and haemoglobin at 6 years might affect subsequent expression and gross motor scores negatively.

The construction of a 190-item developmental inventory for 36-72 month children based on parental report is described. In a sample of 508 mothers (Study 1), alpha-coefficients ranged from r = .72 to r = .90 for the eight subtests. A series of principal components analyses of the subtests' standardized total scores at three age levels revealed two components in each case, one verbal and one motor. The two components accounted for 62.6% (36-47 month olds), 63.3% (48-59 month olds), and 64.3% (60-72 month olds) of the variance of the eight subtests' standardized total scores. In a separate investigation of 27 mother-child dyads (Study 2), the inventory's subtests revealed satisfactory convergent-divergent validity when correlated with subscales of the Griffith's Mental Development Scale.

This paper reports the main findings from a prevalence study of adolescent gambling and problem gambling among Icelandic adolescents. The final sample consisted of 3,511 pupils aged 13 to 15 in 25 primary schools in Reykjavík. The results indicated that 93% of adolescents had gambled some time in their life and 70% at least once in the preceding year. Problem gambling prevalence rates were evaluated with two gambling screens, American Psychological Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4th edition, Multiple-Response-Junior (DSM-IV-MR-J) and the South Oaks Gambling Screen Revised for Adolescents (SOGS-RA). The DSM-IV-MR-J identified 1.9% as problem gamblers, while SOGS-RA identified 2.8% as problem gamblers. The results also showed that problem gamblers reported more difficulties in school and used alcohol and other drugs more frequently than adolescents who gambled socially or not at all. Finally, evaluation of electronic gambling machine (EGM) accessibility revealed that gambling on low-stakes EGMs in public places was more common than on EGMs in arcades or bars and restaurants. The potential implications of these findings are discussed.

Objective: To investigate whether the duration of exclusive breastfeeding and maternal body mass index (BMI) are associated with children's developmental status at the time of beginning elementary school. Design and subjects: The subjects in the sample came from a longitudinal study on infant nutrition in Iceland. Food records were made once a month from birth to the age of 12 months, from which duration of exclusive breastfeeding could be determined. Mothers filled in The Icelandic developmental inventory for evaluation of motor and verbal development close to their children's sixth birthday (n ¼ 85). Maternal self-reported weight and height was recorded. Information on socioeconomic factors was gathered by a questionnaire. Results: Duration of exclusive breastfeeding, in months, was positively related to children's motor component (B ¼ 0.570.5, P ¼ 0.054) and to the total developmental index (B ¼ 1.070.5, P ¼ 0.044) at 6 y, adjusting for gender and socioeconomic factors (maternal and paternal education, and family income). Children's learning score was negatively related to maternal BMI (B ¼ À0.570.2, P ¼ 0.047). An inverse association also appeared between maternal BMI and two out of the three developmental composite scores, that is, verbal component and the total developmental index (B ¼ À0.670.3, P ¼ 0.049) and (B ¼ À0.470.2, P ¼ 0.057), respectively. In multiple regression the developmental indexes were most strongly independently associated with maternal BMI (negatively) and infants' birth weight (positively). Conclusion: Maternal BMI and duration of breastfeeding were associated with verbal and motor development of 6-y-old children, independent of socioeconomic factors. Birth weight was also an independent determinant for developmental scores.