JERUSALEM INFANT DEVELOPMENT STUDY: ADOLESCENT FOLLOW-UP

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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.