ABSTRACT
This chapter examines research that has investigated direct relationships between measures of the alpha press of family environments and children's cognitive performance and affective characteristics. Only the behaviour or attitude items, from the family environment schedule, that had the strongest relations to the cognitive scores are presented. In studies of Canadian children, Mosychuk and Marjoribanks moved beyond the examination of global intelligence scores and investigated relations between the family environment and sets of ability measures. The 'Chicago' school studies have measured family environments with greater precision than most prior investigations of the relations between family environments and children's cognitive performance. In the initial studies of the 'Chicago' school, Dave and Wolf examined relations between the family environment and measures of academic achievement and intelligence, respectively. As the research of the 'Chicago' school was undertaken, another set of studies, which may loosely be grouped together as the 'British' school, was being generated.
