Most children develop well and find their way into society without many problems, but not all children manage to do so. We test how individual trajectories are related to a combination of the child’s disposition and the environment in which he or she is raised. We aim to understand the role of brain development, how children’s chances for thriving are influenced by their parents, and how we can better guide children’s development.

The Leiden Consortium on Individual Development (L-CID) is a large-scale longitudinal study in which 500 families with same-sex twins were followed over a six year period. L-CID has a cohort-sequential design with two cohorts: an early childhood cohort (ECC), aged 3-4 at wave 1, and a middle childhood cohort (MCC), aged 7-8 at wave 1. Annual assessments consist of alternating lab- or home visits during which behavioral and neurobiological data are collected. We finished the data collection for both cohorts.

The collected data allows, among others, for testing which child characteristics shape the effect of environmental factors. The aim of L-CID is twofold:

  1. To investigate the development of social competence and behavioral control in children between 3 and 14 years old
  2. To dissect the reason why not all children are equally responsive to variations in the social environment.

Find out more about this project on our project website: www.developmentmatters.nl