Recently the editors of the JCPP were challenged that there must be a policy within the Journal creating a bias against a particular topic which, it was claimed, was under-represented in the Journal. Our response to this was that there is indeed no editorial policy on specific topics to be included or excluded from the Journal. It is only the scientific merit of the individual papers that determines what gets accepted and what is rejected. The topics of the papers that appear in the Journal are primarily a reflection of the range of papers that are submitted. The editors of the Journal act autonomously in deciding, in the light of referees' comments, whether to accept a paper or not. In a similar manner, the Associate Editors and Corresponding Editors have independence in making decisions about papers to appear in the Annual Research Reviews and in the Practitioner Reviews and Annotations.

One consequence of this autonomy is that, as an editor, it is only when an issue is collated that material processed by the other editors comes to your attention. This usually creates a number of pleasant surprises and this issue is no exception. It was not until I received the collection of papers to appear in this issue that I was aware of the Annotation provided by Weiss. These editorials are intended to draw to the reader's attention aspects of the papers appearing in each issue that are of particular salience to clinicians. This annotation by Weiss should be required reading for all clinicians.

Outcome studies of child psychotherapy have sometimes been categorized into two broad types of studies. Ideally, psychotherapy outcome investigators first conduct “efficacy studies”, where internal validity is at the forefront and where considerable control is exercised over and within the experimental design (Hoagwood, Hibbs, Brent, & Jensen, 1995). In efficacy studies, often: (a) specific inclusion and exclusion criteria will be defined in order to restrict the sample to children exhibiting only the specific behavioral/emotional problem area upon which the treatment focuses; (b) the sample will be randomly assigned to treatment and comparison groups; (c) in order to allow for assignment to a no-treatment control group, the sample will not be seeking treatment (i.e. not clinic-referred); and (d) the investigators will exercise a high degree of control over the intervention (e.g. spend several months training therapists who are hired specifically for the project, see, e.g., Lewinsohn, Clarke, Hops, & Andrews, 1990).

“Effectiveness studies” are conducted where the focus is more on external validity and generalizability. In contrast to efficacy studies, effectiveness studies generally: (a) take place in naturalistic settings, where the mental health treatment of children actually occurs (e.g. in clinics); (b) use heterogeneous samples that are actually seeking services; (c) involve practitioners rather than research therapists; and (d) allow therapists more control over the intervention (see, e.g., Weisz & Weiss, 1989).

Children with autism are known to have difficulties in sharing attention with others. Yet one joint attention behaviour, the ability to follow another person's head turn and gaze direction, may be achieved without necessarily sharing attention. Why, then, should autistic children have difficulties with it? In this study we examined the extent of this difficulty by testing school-aged autistic children across three different contexts; experiment, observation, and parent interview. We also tested whether the ability to orient to another person's head and gaze could be facilitated by increasing children's attention to environmental targets and social cues. Results for experiment and observation demonstrate that a sizeable proportion of children with autism did not have difficulties with following another's head turn. There was a difference between children with high and low verbal mental ages, however. Whereas children with higher mental ages (over 48 months) were able to orient spontaneously to another person's head turn, children with lower mental ages had difficulties with this response. When cues were added (pointing, language) or when feedback from targets was given, however, their performance improved. Parent interview data indicated that children with autism, whatever their mental age, began to follow head turn and gaze direction years later than typically developing children. Developments in attention and language are proposed as possible factors to account for this developmental delay.

This paper reviews some of the characteristics of the informants as well as some of the attributes of the DICA-R interview that could influence the test–retest reliability in a sample of 109 psychiatric outpatients aged 7–17 years. Different regression models using reliability coefficients constructed from the kappa statistic were obtained. Of those characteristics evaluated in the children, a high level of psychological impairment proved to be significant when it came to predicting the lowest test–retest reliability of the answers; none of the subject-related characteristics were significant in the adolescent patient model. The attributes of the questions that proved to be significant when explaining the lower reliability obtained for the individual question in the children's model were the length of the questions (longest questions), the content (internalising), the presence of time concepts, comparison with the peer group, and the need to exercise judgement; in the adolescents' model, the significant attributes were found to be the internalising content, the presence of time concepts, evaluation concerning the impairment caused by the disorder, and the need to exercise judgement. In the group of children our results are in accordance with the original paper. Similar results were found with adolescents. These findings have implications for the development and revision of new interview schedules.

The changes occurring within Korean society provide an opportunity for studying the influence of family structure on children's emotional and behavioural problems. Children aged 7–13 years from two Korean cities were assessed for emotional and behavioural problems in school by their teachers, using the Children's Behaviour Questionnaire. In Study 1, 326 children from extended families were compared with demographically matched nuclear family children in the same school classes. In Study 2, a further sample of 204 extended family children was compared with pair-matched nuclear family children, in order to replicate the findings. Children from Study 1 were followed up 2.5 years later. Children from extended families had lower behaviour problems scores and the prevalence of serious problems was lower in extended family children. These differences were most marked in relation to externalising behaviour problems and were stable over the studies and time. Grandparents in extended families may increase children's resiliency by providing sources of attachment, affection, and knowledge, as well as having indirect effects through their support of parents. Consistent with recent ideas about the cognitive bases for behaviour problems, it may be that rules for behaviour derived from traditional cultural beliefs and values are internalised by children from extended families and generalise to prevent behaviour problems in school.

It is widely recognised that impaired social relations are characteristic of school-aged children with behavioural disorders, and predict a poor long-term outcome (Parker & Asher, 1987). However, little is known about the early antecedents of social impairment in behaviourally disturbed children. The aim of the present study was to explore three areas of potential dysfunction in younger children: theory of mind, emotion understanding, and executive function. Forty preschoolers, rated by their parents on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1994) as “hard to manage” (H2M) were compared with a control group on a set of: (1) theory of mind tasks (including an emotion prediction task involving either a nice or a nasty surprise); (2) emotion understanding stories (that required affective perspective-taking skills as well as situational understanding); and (3) simple executive function tasks (adapted for preschoolers, and tapping inhibitory control, attentional set-shifting, and working memory). Small but significant group differences were found in all three cognitive domains. In particular, hard-to-manage preschoolers showed poor understanding of emotion and executive control, poor prediction or recall of a false belief, and better understanding of the belief-dependency of emotion in the context of a trick than a treat. Moreover, executive function was associated with performance on the theory of mind tasks for the hard-to-manage group alone, suggesting both direct and indirect links between executive dysfunction and disruptive behaviour.

Methods of structural equation modelling were used to analyse the correlations between reports of tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis use in a birth cohort of New Zealand children studied to the age of 16. This analysis produced three major conclusions: (a) the correlations between tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis use could be explained by a factor representing the individual's vulnerability to substance use; (b) predictors of vulnerability to substance use were the extent to which the individual affiliated with delinquent or substance using peers, novelty seeking, and parental illicit drug use; (c) in the region of 54% of the correlations between substance use behaviours could be predicted from observed risk factors and 46% was attributable to non-observed sources of vulnerability.

The relationship of atopic and behavioral symptoms in a community sample of 66 monozygotic and 141 dizygotic twin pairs, ages 4–11 years, was investigated via mother report questionnaires. Within-person correlation between atopic symptoms and Child Behavior Checklist internalizing symptoms (CBCL-INT) was .21 (p<.001) for the total sample. Cross-correlations between atopy and CBCL-INT were .26 for monozygotic and .04 for dizygotic twins. A common and specific factor model applied to the data revealed that the cross-correlation between atopy and CBCL-INT was mainly due to genetic influences (77% of the covariance). This study supports the hypothesis that there is a shared genetic risk for atopy and internalizing symptoms.

The aim of this investigation was to follow up a sample of exceptionally short but medically healthy children, and a normal comparison group, previously studied at 4 years of age. They lived in an inner-city area which was, on objective criteria, seriously disadvantaged in socioeconomic terms. When first seen at 4 years, cases were significantly impaired in cognitive abilities relative to comparisons, although firstborns were much less severely affected. Of the original 46 cases, 45 were assessed again at 11 years. Most continued to live in the same geographical area. Case children remained exceptionally short, even when parental stature was taken into account, although a degree of catch-up had occurred. One third had special educational needs, and a similar proportion had been referred for speech therapy. Verbal and nonverbal cognitive skills of both case and comparison children had, on the whole, changed little and group differences persisted. In conclusion, short normal children from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds are at high risk of educational failure at elementary school.

Previous research into subjective probability estimates for negative events revealed that depressed children estimated events as equally likely to happen to themselves as to other children. In contrast, both controls and anxious children estimated that negative events were more likely to happen to others than to themselves. The present study followed up this finding by investigating the subjective probability judgements concerning future negative events generated by children and adolescents who have recovered from depression. Subjects generated probability estimates either for themselves or for other children for a range of negative events on a visual analogue scale. The results revealed that both recovered depressed and matched control groups estimated negative events as significantly more likely to happen to others than to themselves. It was also found that the recovered depressed subjects estimated that negative events were less likely overall, compared to the controls. These results are discussed in the context of the adult literature.

Objective: To identify similarities and differences in neuropsychiatric correlates in children with Tourette's syndrome (TS) and those with ADHD. Method: The sample consisted of children with Tourette's syndrome with ADHD(N=79), children with Tourette's syndrome without ADHD (N=18), children with ADHD (N=563), psychiatrically referred children (N=212), and healthy controls (N=140). Results: Disorders specifically associated with Tourette's syndrome were obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and simple phobias. Rates of other disorders, including other disruptive behavioral, mood, and anxiety disorders, neuropsychologic correlates, and social and school functioning were indistinguishable in children with Tourette's and ADHD. However, children with Tourette's syndrome plus ADHD had more additional comorbid disorders overall and lower psychosocial function than children with ADHD. Conclusions: These findings confirm previously noted associations between Tourette's syndrome and OCDbut suggest that disruptive behavioral, mood, and anxiety disorders as well as cognitive dysfunctions may be accounted for by comorbidity with ADHD. However, Tourette's syndrome plus ADHD appears to be a more severe condition than ADHD alone.

ADHD is a familial disorder with high rates of comorbidity with conduct disorder in childhood and antisocial personality and substance use disorders in adulthood. A growing literature suggests that ADHD with antisocial comorbidity may be nosologically distinct from other forms of ADHD. Previously, we proposed a family-based stratification that defined Antisocial families as those with either conduct disorder or antisocial personality disorder in the probands or relatives. To provide predictive validity for that stratification, we assessed psychopathology in these families 4 years after their initial assessment. Results show that the probands and siblings from Antisocial families had higher rates of psychopathology during the 4-year follow-up period compared with siblings from Non-antisocial and control families. They also had more deviant ratings on the Child Behavior Checklist (especially for anxious/depressed, delinquent, and aggressive behavior). We found fewer group differences in the academic, psychosocial, and intellectual correlates of ADHD. These results confirm and extend previous work indicating that Antisocial ADHD may be a nosologically and clinically meaningful subform of ADHD.