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The Effects of Parental Separation, the Timing of Separation and Gender on Children's Performance on Cognitive Tests
Author(s) -
Fergusson David M.,
Lynskey Michael T.,
Horwood L. John
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
journal of child psychology and psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.652
H-Index - 211
eISSN - 1469-7610
pISSN - 0021-9630
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-7610.1994.tb01810.x
Subject(s) - separation (statistics) , psychology , confounding , developmental psychology , cognition , allowance (engineering) , association (psychology) , cognitive test , cohort , demography , medicine , psychiatry , statistics , mechanical engineering , mathematics , pathology , engineering , psychotherapist , sociology
— The relationship between exposure to parental separation and measures of cognitive ability and school achievement was examined in a birth cohort of New Zealand children studied to the age of 13 years. Children who were exposed to parental separation following the point of school entry had mean test scores that were between. 1 and. 3 standard deviations lower than children who had not been exposed to separation even when due allowance was made for potentially confounding variables. Separation prior to school entry was found to be unrelated to later outcomes after adjustment for confounding factors. There was no evidence to suggest that the effects of separation varied with the child's gender. The association between parental separation after school entry and cognitive test scores was similar for children whose custodial parents remarried and those who did not remarry.