Behavioral characteristics during developmental assessments of preschool children with and without a maternal psychiatric history

Objective: The primary aim of this study was to examine behavioral differences at age four years between child offspring of mothers with a psychiatric diagnosis that included psychosis and child offspring of mothers who have never received such a diagnosis. Method: This study involved secondary data analysis of child behavior ratings made for quality control purposes from observations of video records of individual developmental assessments. In this thesis, these ratings are used to characterize the children’s behavior directly so as to compare groups of children with and without possible increased risk of psychiatric disorders due to genetic history. As part of this thesis, inter-rater reliability across multiple raters was also established. Results: Independent-samples t-tests were used to compare the data between the two groups on overall mean ratings, on the seven behavioral dimensions, and the overall average behavior rating. Compared to the comparison group (C), children at genetic risk for developing a psychiatric disorder (R) exhibited significantly lower levels of appropriate activity level, focus, cooperativeness, and persistence during the testing session. Males at genetic risk for developing a psychiatric disorder exhibited lower levels of all behavioral dimensions when compared to male comparisons. Similarly, females at genetic risk for developing a psychiatric disorder exhibited lower levels of appropriate activity level, focus, cooperativeness, persistence, and enthusiasm compared to comparison females. Limitations: The context for the ratings may not represent the child’s typical behavior in other contexts. Due to the limited sample size, data from offspring of mothers with different psychiatric diagnoses were grouped together, and were not examined separately. Conclusions: Assessment of behavior characteristics may be useful in characterizing children at genetic risk for developing a psychiatric disorder.Bachelor of Art