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Warwick study shows that adults born prematurely are less able to form romantic relations and have children

In a paper published in JAMA Network Open, researchers from The University of Warwick, Monash University, and the University of Bonn, reveal that adults who were born very prematurely, or with a very low birth weight have greater difficulty in forming romantic and sexual relationships and starting a family.

Read more here

Thu 20 Mar 2025, 13:35 | Tags: EDandI, postgraduate, research

New research finds that developmental outcomes can be best predicted by infant characteristics and parenting. Read the details of the study here.

Mother and Child

Interactions between infant characteristics and parenting factors rarely replicate across cohorts and developmental domains

Robert Eves, Finiki Nearchou, Dieter Wolke, Michael Pluess, Sakari Lemola

First published: 10 March 2025

https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.14149

A new study led by Dr Robert Eves, Honorary Research Fellow and Prof. Dieter Wolke from Warwick and colleagues from the Universities of Bielefeld, Surrey and University College Dublin investigated how infant characteristics (temperament, birthweight) and parenting affect later developmental outcome such as IQ and mental health. Various developmental models have been put forward how infant characteristics and parenting may affect outcome ranging from various interactive models (diathesis-stress, differential susceptibility or vantage sensitive) or are they simply additive effects?

Our investigation utilising four cohort studies in four countries incorporating over 30.000 children and their parents found that a simple additive model of infant characteristics and parenting predicted most outcomes (10/16 analyses) followed by diathesis stress (4/16) and vantage sensitivity (2/16). No evidence for differential susceptibility was found.

To conclude, developmental outcomes are more consistently explained by additive effects rather than by interaction effects. Simple is beautiful!

Thu 13 Mar 2025, 09:51 | Tags: EDandI, other, postgraduate, research

Dr Yanlin Zhou, part of the WLNG research group working on the R2D2-MH project, has been awarded a prestigious 2 year MSCA award working at the Max Plank Institute of Psycholinguistics. Congratulations!

Professor Dieter Wolke and the Warwick Lifecourse and Neonatal Group congratulate Dr Yanlin Zhou from the R2D2-MH project on the award of an MSCA fellowship working with Dr Beate St Pourcain at the Max Plank Institute of Psycholinguistics on a 2 year project investigating the Genomic and Environmental factors of Resilience to Early-life stress.

MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship results logo

Tue 11 Feb 2025, 13:34 | Tags: EDandI, postgraduate, research

Dieter Wolke quoted in House of Lords report Preterm Birth: Reducing Risks and Improving Lives published 14/11/24

Dieter Wolke's evidence is mentioned at several places on how prematurity creates inequality in developmental outcome and how to improve transition into school.

Thu 14 Nov 2024, 13:15 | Tags: EDandI, postgraduate, research

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