| Abstract: | SUMMARY One of the exciting new directions in family research is the examination of shared and nonshared environmental processes underlying the learning of cognitive, literacy, and social-behavioral skills. The adoption design is a powerful method for testing theories regarding environmental mechanisms. In this paper, we describe the Northeast-Northwest Collaborative Adoption Project (N2CAP), an ongoing adoption study in which we are examining the role of parenting environments generally, and parent-child relationships more specifically, in the development of cognitive, reading and social-emotional outcomes in childhood. The goal of this study is to identify environmental influences that impact children's cognitive and social-emotional development using a genetically sensitive design, and to further the development of models of genotype-environment processes. |
