The proposed research will examine a broad range of behavioral variables in a group of Israeli adolescents at high risk for schizophrenia. Forty children with schizophrenic parents will be compared to a group of fifty children whose parents have other mental disorders and forty children with mentally healthy parents. Approximately half of the proposed sample was recruited during their mothers' pregnancies and have been followed longitudinally since infancy as part of the Jerusalem Infant Development Study. The remaining half was recruited and first assessed during school- age. Adolescent follow-up instruments will include measures of information processing and attentional functioning, neuromotor functioning, clinical status, and family environment. The goal of the proposed research is to clarify the growing literature suggesting that children of schizophrenics have neurobehavioral signs which may be markers of vulnerability to later schizophrenic breakdown. The proposed research will attempt to identify with greater specificity than previous work the nature of such neurobehavioral signs, to determine whether they can be observed with continuity during various stages of the life cycle, and to determine how they, in combination with family factors, are related to premorbid symptoms of schizophrenia observed during adolescents.
| Hans, Sydney L; Auerbach, Judith G; Nuechterlein, Keith H et al. (2009) Neurodevelopmental factors associated with schizotypal symptoms among adolescents at risk for schizophrenia. Dev Psychopathol 21:1195-210 |
| Hans, Sydney L; Auerbach, Judith G; Auerbach, Aaron G et al. (2005) Development from birth to adolescence of children at-risk for schizophrenia. J Child Adolesc Psychopharmacol 15:384-94 |
| Hans, Sydney L; Auerbach, Judith G; Styr, Benedict et al. (2004) Offspring of parents with schizophrenia: mental disorders during childhood and adolescence. Schizophr Bull 30:303-15 |
| Hans, S L; Auerbach, J G; Asarnow, J R et al. (2000) Social adjustment of adolescents at risk for schizophrenia: the Jerusalem Infant Development Study. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 39:1406-14 |
| Hans, S L; Marcus, J; Nuechterlein, K H et al. (1999) Neurobehavioral deficits at adolescence in children at risk for schizophrenia: The Jerusalem Infant Development Study. Arch Gen Psychiatry 56:741-8 |
| Arbelle, S; Magharious, W; Auerbach, J G et al. (1997) Formal thought disorder in offspring of schizophrenic parents. Isr J Psychiatry Relat Sci 34:210-21 |
