Browsing by Subject "Cognitive"

This study uses the data from the National Institute for Children Health and Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development to evaluate features of wage and childcare price changes that are associated with positive effects on children's early cognitive skills. Identifying beneficial characteristics of changes in market variables is especially relevant in a policy environment where the main priority of tax incentives related to the use of childcare is not facilitating the formation of children's cognitive skills, but reducing reliance on the welfare system through increase in employment among poor households.

We estimate jointly the discrete household choices related to the employment status of the mother and the use of a paid care mode, the demand functions for quantity and quality of childcare, the production function for cognitive outcomes, the wage process for the mother, and childcare price equations based on the hedonic pricing method, while at the same time introducing unobserved heterogeneity in the disturbance terms of the estimated outcomes. Our strategy for handling selection problems also utilizes the exogenous variation in childcare prices across the 10 geographical markets defined by the study sites in the NICHD SECCYD dataset, which in our model influence choices, but do not affect cognitive outcomes directly.

Our results show that failing to account for common unobserved characteristics would lead to underestimating the impact of all analyzed wage and price changes. We find that prices and wages do not have a statistically significant impact on the quality of paid care, while the marginal product of that attribute of care is positive for almost all input combinations in the production of cognitive attainment. Therefore, a policy utilizing changes in wages and prices can be effective in improving early cognitive skill only through the impact of those changes on the intensity of paid care use.

The comparison of the effects of wage and price changes on early cognitive skills for three sets of values of the observable household characteristics representing low, middle and high income households lead to the following conclusions: (1) a tax credit for working mothers and childcare subsidies for center-based care can bring disproportionate gains for children in low and middle income groups; (2) subsidizing paid home care for children less than three and a half years old can be more effective than subsidizing center-based care for the same age group in terms of improving cognitive outcomes at the age of five; (3) conditioning childcare assistance for paid care on the employment status of the mother does not seem to have a strong negative effect on early skill formation; and (4) tax incentives affecting wage rates and childcare prices prove to be beneficial for the formation of early cognitive skills only when they are implemented while the child is less than three and a half years old.

Background: The role of grandparents has changed in response to social, economic and demographic factors, which may operate both in favour of or against the relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren. The potential positive impact of the grandparent-grandchild relationship on the development of adolescent grandchildren has been increasingly recognized, although relatively few studies have directly related this relationship to measures of child well-being. This study aims to examine the association between grandparent-grandchild interactions and socio-emotional and cognitive outcomes among adolescent grandchildren in Sri Lanka. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted within schools, temples, homes and community buildings in Galle District. An interviewer-assisted survey was used to collect data about the adolescent participants’ demographics, family and household information, grandparent relationships, empathy, and socio-emotional development. A cognitive test was used to assess the adolescents’ cognitive development. Univariate, bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to examine the association between the grandparent-grandchild relationship and adolescent outcomes. Results: Our results indicate that grandparent-grandchild relationships are significantly associated with adolescent socio-emotional and cognitive development. Conclusions: This study underlines the importance of the grandparent-grandchild relationship.

My dissertation seeks to understand how and why governments make major changes in financial sector regulations. I focus on two specific puzzles. First why is financial sector regulation not normally central to electoral competition and why are changes in financial sector regulation rare events? Second, why do we observe substantive intellectual debates and efforts of policy persuasion despite the conclusion of many researchers and observers that financial regulatory policy outcomes are driven by the preferences of powerful special interest groups? What are the mechanisms precisely by which ideas versus interests shape policy outcomes in a domain that is not often central to electoral politics? I investigate these questions through a formal game theoretical model of the regulatory policymaking process and through case studies of historic episodes of financial regulatory change in the United States which draw upon a wide variety of primary and secondary source historical materials. I conclude that financial regulatory change is most likely to occur when events of different types cause heads of government to perceive that the existing regulatory status quo threatens the realization of broader policy objectives. Heads of financial sector policy bureaucracies shape outcomes by providing cognitive frameworks through which leaders understand regulatory consequences. Interest groups influence policy outcomes primarily through their ability to act as veto players rather than by controlling the policy agenda.

Mood and anxiety disorders are heterogenous disorders that display complex symptom presentations. While cognitive deficits have been demonstrated in meta-analyses of currently depressed individuals (Snyder, 2013), a number of questions remain as to the role of cognitive deficits in depression. Given ongoing debates about whether the FDA should approve drugs to treat cognitive deficits associated with depression (Ledford, 2016; Mullard, 2016), it is essential to gain a more complete understanding of the role of cognitive function in the disorder. This dissertation is comprised of three studies that broadly explore the association between cognitive functioning and depressive diagnoses and symptoms. First, I look at the longitudinal relationship between cognitive function and later depression through a systematic review and meta-analysis of the extant literature, “The Association Between Cognitive Function and Subsequent Depression: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” I find that cognitive function predicts future depressive symptoms and diagnoses, but that this effect is likely driven by depressive symptoms at the time of cognitive testing. The value of a dimensional versus categorical framework for diagnosis is discussed. Next, I investigate this relationship with more precision by studying the association between cognitive function and depression in a well-documented longitudinal dataset. Here, I find that comorbid diagnoses play an important role in moderating the association between cognitive function and depression, “Is Low Cognitive Functioning a Predictor or Consequence of Major Depressive Disorder? A Test in Two Longitudinal Birth Cohorts.” Finally, I look at neural correlates of cognitive function in relation to symptoms of mood and anxiety disorders broadly, “Thinking and Feeling: Individual Differences in Habitual Emotion Regulation and Stress-Related Mood are Associated with Prefrontal Executive Control.” I find that dorsolateral prefrontal activity during a non-emotion-related working memory task is associated with both mood and anxiety symptoms and clinical diagnoses. Additionally, the results suggest that cognitive reappraisal is also associated with this prefrontal activity, indicating a possible mechanism through which cognitive function is related to mood and anxiety symptoms. The results of these studies are discussed in regards to implications for targeting treatments for mood and anxiety disorders.

Mood and anxiety disorders are heterogenous disorders that display complex symptom presentations. While cognitive deficits have been demonstrated in meta-analyses of currently depressed individuals (Snyder, 2013), a number of questions remain as to the role of cognitive deficits in depression. Given ongoing debates about whether the FDA should approve drugs to treat cognitive deficits associated with depression (Ledford, 2016; Mullard, 2016), it is essential to gain a more complete understanding of the role of cognitive function in the disorder. This dissertation is comprised of three studies that broadly explore the association between cognitive functioning and depressive diagnoses and symptoms. First, I look at the longitudinal relationship between cognitive function and later depression through a systematic review and meta-analysis of the extant literature, “The Association Between Cognitive Function and Subsequent Depression: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” I find that cognitive function predicts future depressive symptoms and diagnoses, but that this effect is likely driven by depressive symptoms at the time of cognitive testing. The value of a dimensional versus categorical framework for diagnosis is discussed. Next, I investigate this relationship with more precision by studying the association between cognitive function and depression in a well-documented longitudinal dataset. Here, I find that comorbid diagnoses play an important role in moderating the association between cognitive function and depression, “Is Low Cognitive Functioning a Predictor or Consequence of Major Depressive Disorder? A Test in Two Longitudinal Birth Cohorts.” Finally, I look at neural correlates of cognitive function in relation to symptoms of mood and anxiety disorders broadly, “Thinking and Feeling: Individual Differences in Habitual Emotion Regulation and Stress-Related Mood are Associated with Prefrontal Executive Control.” I find that dorsolateral prefrontal activity during a non-emotion-related working memory task is associated with both mood and anxiety symptoms and clinical diagnoses. Additionally, the results suggest that cognitive reappraisal is also associated with this prefrontal activity, indicating a possible mechanism through which cognitive function is related to mood and anxiety symptoms. The results of these studies are discussed in regards to implications for targeting treatments for mood and anxiety disorders.