Gender gaps in cognitive and social-emotional skills in early primary grades: Evidence from rural Indonesia.

This paper examines the magnitude and source of gender gaps in cognitive and social-emotional skills in early primary grades in rural Indonesia. Relative to boys, girls score more than 0.17 SD higher in tests of language and mathematics (cognitive skills) and between 0.18 and 0.27 SD higher in measures of social competence and emotional maturity (social-emotional skills). We use Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to investigate the extent to which gender differences in early schooling and parenting practices explain these gender gaps in skills. For cognitive skills, differences in early schooling between boys and girls explain between 9% and 11% of the gender gap whereas differences in parenting practices explain merely 3%-5% of the gender gap. This decomposition result is driven largely by children living in villages with high-quality preschools. In contrast, for social-emotional skills, differences in parenting styles toward boys and girls explain between 13% and 17% of the gender gap, while differences in early schooling explain only 0%-6% of the gender gap.

Association of anthropometric measures and cardiovascular risk factors in children and adolescents: Findings from the Aboriginal Birth Cohort study.

This study examined the association of anthropometric measures including height, leg length, trunk length and body mass index (BMI) at 11 and 18 years with systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c) at 11 and 18 years. We analysed data from 661 participants from the Aboriginal Birth Cohort study-a longitudinal study based in the Northern Territory, Australia. Associations between anthropometric measures and cardiovascular risk factors were investigated in linear regression analyses adjusted for confounding, with imputation for missing data. In adjusted analyses, increasing leg length [males: 0.47mmHg/cm (0.23, 0.72); females: 0.50mmHg/cm (0.18, 0.83)], trunk length [males: 0.50mmHg/cm (0.28, 0.73); females: 0.57mmHg/cm (0.33, 0.81)] and height [males: 0.32mmHg/cm (0.16, 0.48); females: 0.32mmHg/cm (0.12, 0.52)] at 11 years was associated with higher SBP at 11 years. When these exposures were measured at 18 years the effect on SBP at 18 years had attenuated, and only increased trunk length was associated with higher SBP at 18 years for both sexes [males: 0.46mmHg/cm (0.05, 0.87); females: 0.69mmHg/cm (0.30, 1.08)]. We observed little association between height, leg length and trunk length and DBP, total cholesterol, LDL-c and HDL-c. Increased BMI was associated with elevated SBP and DBP at 11 and 18 years. Our findings suggest that height, leg length, and trunk length measured at 11 and 18 years was generally not associated with cardiovascular risk factors at 11 and 18 years. However, greater childhood BMI was associated with higher blood pressure and this association persisted into adolescence. This study contributes to the limited body of evidence on the association between measures of early anthropometry and cardiovascular risk among the Australian Aboriginal population.

Risk Factors for Nonadherence to Antihypertensive Treatment.

Nonadherence to antihypertensive treatment is a critical contributor to suboptimal blood pressure control. There are limited and heterogeneous data on the risk factors for nonadherence because few studies used objective-direct diagnostic methods. We used high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry of urine and serum to detect nonadherence and explored its association with the main demographic- and therapy-related factors in 1348 patients with hypertension from 2 European countries. The rates of nonadherence to antihypertensive treatment were 41.6% and 31.5% in the UK and Czech populations, respectively. Nonadherence was inversely related to age and male sex. Each increase in the number of antihypertensive medications led to 85% and 77% increase in nonadherence (P<0.001) in the UK and Czech populations, respectively. The odds of nonadherence to diuretics were the highest among 5 classes of antihypertensive medications (P≤0.005 in both populations). The predictive model for nonadherence, including age, sex, diuretics, and the number of prescribed antihypertensives, showed area under the curves of 0.758 and 0.710 in the UK and Czech populations, respectively. The area under the curves for the UK model tested on the Czech data and for the Czech model tested on UK data were calculated at 0.708 and 0.756, respectively. We demonstrate that the number and class of prescribed antihypertensives are modifiable risk factors for biochemically confirmed nonadherence to blood pressure-lowering therapy. Further development of discriminatory models incorporating these parameters might prove clinically useful in assessment of nonadherence in countries where biochemical analysis is unavailable.

Stimulus type and the list strength paradigm.

In recognition memory, increasing the strength of studied items does not reduce performance on other items, an effect dubbed the null list strength effect (LSE). While this finding has been replicated many times, it has rarely been tested using stimuli other than single words. Kinnell and Dennis ( 2012 ) recently tested for the presence of list length effects using non-word stimulus classes while controlling for the confounds that are present in list length designs. Small list length effects were found for fractal and face images. We adopted the same paradigm and stimuli used by Kinnell and Dennis to test whether these stimuli would be susceptible to list strength effects as well. We found significant LSEs for fractal images, but null LSEs for face images and natural scene photographs. Stimuli other than words do appear to be susceptible to list strength effects, but these effects are small and restricted to particular stimulus classes, as is the case in list length designs. Models of memory may be able to address differences between these stimulus classes by attributing differences in representational overlap between the stimulus classes.

The role of stimulus type in list length effects in recognition memory.

While many studies have investigated the list length effect in recognition memory, few have done so with stimuli other than words. This article presents the results of four list length experiments that involved word pairs, faces, fractals, and photographs of scenes as the stimuli. A significant list length effect was identified when faces and fractals were the stimuli, but the effect was nonsignificant when the stimuli were word pairs or photographs of scenes. These findings suggest that the intrastimulus similarity is what dictates whether list length has a significant effect on recognition performance. As is the case with words, word pairs and photographs of scenes are not sufficiently similar to generate detectable item interference.

The list length effect in recognition memory: an analysis of potential confounds.

The list length effect in recognition memory refers to the finding that recognition performance for a short list is superior to that for a long list. The list length effect is consistent with the predictions of item noise models, but context noise models predict no effect. Recently, it has been argued that if potential confounds are controlled, the list length effect is eliminated. We report the results of two experiments in which we looked at the role of attention and the remember-know task in the detection of the list length effect. We conclude that there is no list length effect when potential confounds are controlled and that it is the design used to control for attention that is most vital.