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Biomedical subjects

K McBurnett

Publications and source records attributed to K McBurnett.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

Anxiety, inhibition, and conduct disorder in children: I. Relations to social impairment.

Jeffrey A. Gray has proposed a model in which conduct disorder (CD) is viewed as the result of both excessive activity of a behavioral activation system that mediates appetitive and aggressive behavior and deficient activity of a behavioral inhibition system that mediates both anxiety and the inhibition of behavior in the presence of cues signalling impending punishment or frustration. The relation of anxiety to antisocial behavior was examined in 177 clinic-referred boys, aged 7 to 12 years, 68 of whom met DSM-III-R criteria for CD. As predicted by Gray's model, boys with CD and comorbid anxiety disorder were markedly less impaired than boys with CD alone.

Aggression

Anxiety, inhibition, and conduct disorder in children: II. Relation to salivary cortisol.

The relation of symptoms of conduct disorder (CD) and anxiety to salivary cortisol was explored in 67 clinic-referred boys aged 8 to 13 years. Children with anxiety disorder had higher levels of cortisol, but this main effect was qualified by a significant CD x anxiety disorder interaction. Consistent with Gray's biological model of the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), children with both CD and anxiety disorder had higher levels of salivary cortisol than children with CD without comorbid anxiety disorder. In the absence of CD, however, anxiety disorder was not clearly associated with higher cortisol. This result suggests that cortisol may be a useful biological marker of arousal associated with BIS activity in children with CD.

Adolescent

Effects of stimulant medication on learning in children with ADHD.

It is well established that stimulant medication improves classroom manageability and attention in terms of time on task, but does stimulant medication improve learning or long-term academic achievement in children with ADHD? There is no clear evidence that it does, but there are at least two reasons why beneficial effects may be obscured in research studies and clinical practice: (1) Higher-than-optimal doses may be prescribed if behavioral response (rather than cognitive response) is used to titrate the dose, and (2) treatment may be overinclusive if diagnostic groups are targeted in which a significant proportion of cases do not have favorable cognitive responses to medication. This article addresses these two issues and describes a large clinical series of patients who were evaluated using a double-blind medication assessment protocol designed to overcome some of the theoretical deficiencies suggested by these issues.

Achievement

ADHD and LD.

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Adolescent

Serious conduct problems in the children of adolescent mothers: disentangling confounded correlations.

Early motherhood (less than 20 years of age) was found to be significantly correlated (r = .33) with the number of DSM-III symptoms of conduct disorder in a sample of 253 boys aged 6-13 years who had been referred to outpatient clinics. The following models were compared using path analysis: (a) Teenage motherhood, parental antisocial personality, and SES each contribute uniquely to the prediction of childhood conduct problems; (b) teenage motherhood mediates the association of SES and parental antisocial personality with child conduct problems; and (c) teenage motherhood is spuriously related with child conduct problems because of common associations with SES and parental antisocial personality. Model (c) best fit our data. Similar results were obtained whether maternal age at the birth of the firstborn child or the proband child was used to define maternal age and when teenage motherhood was defined as giving birth at less than 18 years.

Adolescent