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The Enduring Predictive Significance of Early Maternal Sensitivity: Social and Academic Competence Through Age 32 Years
Abstract
This study leveraged data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (N = 243) to investigate the predictive significance of maternal sensitivity during the first 3 years of life for social and academic competence through age 32 years. Structural model comparisons replicated previous findings that early maternal sensitivity predicts social skills and academic achievement through midadolescence in a manner consistent with an enduring effects model of development and extended these findings using heterotypic indicators of social competence (effectiveness of romantic engagement) and academic competence (educational attainment) during adulthood. Although early socioeconomic factors and child gender accounted for the predictive significance of maternal sensitivity for social competence, covariates did not fully account for associations between early sensitivity and academic outcomes.
© 2014 The Authors. Child Development © 2014 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.
... Developmental science commonly asserts that adversity exposure during development reduces cognitive performancea claim founded on decades of empirical findings (Duncan et al., 2017;Farah et al., 2006;Fraley et al., 2013;Hackman et al., 2010;McLaughlin et al., 2019;Raby et al., 2015). In recent years, however, adaptation-based frameworks, rooted in the idea that adversity might enhance certain abilities, have complemented this work (Ellis et al., 2017Frankenhuis, Young, et al., 2020;Frankenhuis & de Weerth, 2013;Frankenhuis & Nettle, 2020). ...
... For example, both deficit-and adaptation-based perspectives assume that adversity should reduce performance on standard assessments of cognitive ability Frankenhuis, Young, et al., 2020;Hackman et al., 2010;McLaughlin et al., 2019;Ursache & Noble, 2016). Yet, these tests are often comprised of many different subtests, and individual tests may show unique patterns that diverge from widely used composite scores (e.g., Fraley et al., 2013;Raby et al., 2015). For the deficit literature, principled exploration prompts a closer examination of such tests, because it is clear deficits are not the only possible outcome. ...
... We also know little about the drivers of reduced performance on broad and generic measures of ability and achievement. For example, deficit approaches have collapsed many abilities into composites and have found that adversity exposure tends to be associated with reduced performance (Fraley et al., 2013;Raby et al., 2015). One possibility, however, is that a smaller set of specific performance measures are driving effects. ...
The idea that some abilities might be enhanced by adversity is gaining traction. Adaptation-based approaches have uncovered a few specific abilities enhanced by particular adversity exposures. Yet, for a field to grow, we must not dig too deep, too soon. In this paper, we complement confirmatory research with principled exploration. We draw on two insights from adaptation-based research: 1) enhanced performance manifests within individuals, and 2) reduced and enhanced performance can co-occur. Although commonly assumed, relative performance differences are rarely tested. To quantify them, we need a wide variety of ability measures. However, rather than using adaptive logic to predict which abilities are enhanced or reduced, we develop statistical criteria to identify three data patterns: reduced, enhanced, and intact performance. With these criteria, we analyzed data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development to investigate how adversity shapes within-person performance across 10 abilities in a cognitive and achievement battery. Our goals are to document adversity-shaped cognitive performance patterns, identify drivers of reduced performance, identify sets of “intact” abilities, and discover new enhanced abilities. We believe principled exploration with clear criteria can help break new theoretical and empirical ground, remap old territory, and advance theory development.
... Second, the enduring effects model also proposes that earlier occurring experiences have a direct predictive effect on children's proximal development; however, diverging from the revisionist model, the enduring effects model alternatively theorizes that the effects of childhood caregiving experiences are sustained across development and have a persisting effect on children's distal developmental outcomes by consolidating early responses to the caregiving environment into coherent strategies for managing threat Haltigan et al., 2013;Raby et al., 2015Raby et al., , 2019. Thus, in addition to having an indirect effect on distal developmental outcomes via more proximal developmental and socialization experiences, children's early 2 experiences will continue to exert a direct effect on their development across time. ...
... Although empirical support for revisionist, enduring effects, and sleeper effects models has been illustrated in the broader family context literature (e.g., Haltigan et al., 2013;Raby et al., 2015Raby et al., , 2019Rothenberg et al., 2020), there is a paucity of research examining the long-term implications of harsh parenting across three or more waves of data and, moreover, the available evidence is inconsistent. For instance, providing support for revisionist models, Brody et al. (2014) found significant bivariate associations between harsh parenting at Age 13 and adolescent anger at Age 16, but not Ages 17 or 18; however, they also found some evidence consistent with an enduring effects perspective with significant longitudinal bivariate associations between harsh parenting at Ages 11 and 12 and adolescent anger at Ages 16, 17, and 18. Neaverson et al. (2020) also found mixed support with significant concurrent but not longitudinal associations between harsh parenting and aggression in cross-lagged panel models, suggesting a revisionist model. ...
... The first aim of the study was to characterize the nature of the long-term effects of harsh parenting at Age 9 on internalizing and externalizing symptoms across Ages 9-18. Foundational research examining the transient versus enduring nature of childhood experiences has primarily utilized autoregressive modeling and emphasized comparing the relative fit of the two models rather than modeling the data as completely as possible Haltigan et al., 2013;Raby et al., 2015Raby et al., , 2019. Not surprisingly, basic model tests have generally achieved a relatively poor fit to the data. ...
Guided by developmental models examining the legacy of childhood caregiving environments, we examined the longitudinal pattern of associations between harsh parenting and children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms across late childhood to late adolescence. Participants included 199 youth (48.7% female, 65.3% White, 32.2% Black, 2.5% biracial) and their mothers and fathers from a diverse range of socioeconomic backgrounds. The study utilized a multi-informant, longitudinal design including five waves of data (youths’ mean ages were 9, 10, 11, 17, and 18 across waves). Harsh parenting at Age 9 predicted higher levels of (a) externalizing symptoms at Ages 11, 17, and 18 and (b) internalizing symptoms at Ages 17 and 18. Developmental sensitivity analyses revealed that the magnitude of the more distal association between early harsh parenting and later internalizing and externalizing symptoms was statistically stronger as compared to more proximal associations. Bidirectional analyses revealed that externalizing symptoms at Age 9 predicted harsh parenting at Ages 9, 10, 11, 17, and 18. Whereas links between harsh parenting and internalizing symptoms were consistent with a sleeper effects model, links between harsh parenting and externalizing symptoms provided some support for both enduring and sleeper effects models. Findings inform an understanding of youth developmental sensitivity to harsh parenting and the downstream consequences of harsh parenting. Results have important translational implications, including testing the long-term efficacy of therapeutic programs.
... Mothers with higher sensitivity are thus better able to coregulate their infants, leading to fewer social-emotional problems, such as externalizing symptoms [23,24], and better social-emotional competence [25] later in their development. Maternal sensitivity has also demonstrated persistent associations with children's social competence, even until adolescence and early adulthood [26]. Alongside sensitivity, other aspects of mother-infant interaction may affect children's social-emotional development. ...
... Based on our results, it might be that the influence of early mother-infant interaction lessens by preschool age, at least in a low-risk population, such as our sample. This is understandable, as other factors alongside mother-infant interaction, such as out-of-home childcare and peer groups, have an enhanced impact on children's development [26]. In addition, the importance of the other parent is increasingly important; further, the relationship between mother and child can change over time as the child ages, so it is understandable that associations diminish over time. ...
... In addition, the importance of the other parent is increasingly important; further, the relationship between mother and child can change over time as the child ages, so it is understandable that associations diminish over time. However, our results concerning the associations between mother-infant interaction and children's social-emotional outcomes at 4 years old are contrary to the findings from other studies having found that an early caregiving environment plays an important role in social-emotional development, including at preschool age and even until adulthood [26,29]. It might be that cumulative risk factors, including socioeconomic factors, in addition to mother-child interaction, increase the likelihood of persistent effects on child social-emotional outcomes [26]. ...
We studied the effects of mother–infant interaction and maternal pre- and postnatal psychological distress on children’s social-emotional problems and competences, as well as whether interaction quality moderates the association between distress and children’s outcomes. Maternal pre- and postnatal psychological distress were measured using the SCL and EPDS questionnaires, whereas mother–infant interaction was measured when the child was 8 months old using the EA Scales. Children’s social-emotional development was measured using the BITSEA questionnaire at 2 years old and using the SDQ questionnaire at 4 years old, where higher maternal structuring was associated with fewer social-emotional problems in children and higher maternal sensitivity was associated with greater social-emotional competence in children at 2 years old. Further, higher postnatal distress was found associated with greater social-emotional problems at 2 years old, though neither these effects nor moderating effects at 4 years old were observed after multiple-comparison corrections. Our findings support direct associations of both mother–infant interaction and maternal postnatal psychological distress with children’s social-emotional development during toddlerhood.
... Parental sensitivity plays an important role in a wide range of child developmental outcomes (e.g., Fraley et al., 2013;Lucassen et al., 2015;Mesman et al., 2012;Raby et al., 2015;Zeegers et al., 2017). The World Health Organization (WHO) therefore recommends to provide sensitive caregiving for all young children and to support parents with 2013; Tryphonopoulos et al., 2016). ...
... Existing instruments often lack reports on predictive validity (Lotzin et al., 2015), despite ample evidence for associations of parental sensitivity with a range of child developmental outcomes. For instance, parental sensitivity has been found associated with later externalizing behavior problems (McCarty et al., 2005;Miner & Clarke-Stewart, 2008), internalizing problems (Kok et al., 2013), and social competence (Fraley et al., 2013;Raby et al., 2015). In the current study, the associations between parental sensitivity and these three child developmental outcomes will be compared between the novel instrument and the NICHD-benchmark rating scale (research question 3). ...
... Parental sensitivity as assessed with neither the OK! package nor with the NICHD Parental Sensitivity rating scales statistically predicted externalizing behavior problems, internalizing problems, and social competence when children were 4 and 7 years old. Although this indicates comparable findings on predictive validity for the two instruments, the lack of predictive validity was not consistent with associations found in previous studies (Fraley et al., 2013;Kok et al., 2013;McCarty et al., 2005;Miner & Clarke-Stewart, 2008;Raby et al., 2015). These studies, however, mostly made use of rather large study samples of more than 1300 motherchild dyads in which the studies found small to modest effects. ...
... Specifically, this prior research has found that sensitive parenting buffers the impact of substance exposure on subsequent child behavior problems. Sensitive parenting (i.e., a parent's ability to recognize their child's needs and respond appropriately Ainsworth et al., 1971;Goodman et al., 2017) plays an essential role in the development of children's ER and has enduring effects into later developmental periods (Raby et al., 2015). In fact, sensitive parenting in the first 3 years of life has an enduring impact on adulthood social and academic functioning (Raby et al., 2015). ...
... Sensitive parenting (i.e., a parent's ability to recognize their child's needs and respond appropriately Ainsworth et al., 1971;Goodman et al., 2017) plays an essential role in the development of children's ER and has enduring effects into later developmental periods (Raby et al., 2015). In fact, sensitive parenting in the first 3 years of life has an enduring impact on adulthood social and academic functioning (Raby et al., 2015). This effect is not fully explained by continuity in sensitive parenting, underscoring the impact of the early caregiving environment (Raby et al., 2015). ...
... In fact, sensitive parenting in the first 3 years of life has an enduring impact on adulthood social and academic functioning (Raby et al., 2015). This effect is not fully explained by continuity in sensitive parenting, underscoring the impact of the early caregiving environment (Raby et al., 2015). Sensitive parenting has been targeted as the primary promotive mechanism in an intervention program for mothers with opioid dependence (Labella et al., 2021). ...
Prenatal tobacco exposure (PTE) and tobacco–cannabis coexposure (PTCE) co-occur with negative maternal emotional functioning (termed prenatal risks) and together increase risk for child regulatory problems at early school age (ESA). Little is known about developmental processes in early childhood that may mediate this association. We examined two hypothesized mediational processes linking prenatal risks to ESA emotion regulation (ER) and lability–negativity; parasympathetic functioning at toddler age and chronic risk reflected by continued postnatal maternal negative emotional functioning (i.e., depression, anger/hostility, and emotion dysregulation) and substance exposure. Congruent with differential susceptibility theory, we examined interactions between sensitive parenting and toddler parasympathetic functioning predicting ESA ER. Finally, we explored the role of child sex as a moderator. Mothers (N = 247; 53% male infants; 51% Black, 31% White, 19% Hispanic, and 8% other or mixed race) were recruited in the first trimester of pregnancy into one of three groups: PTE (n = 81), PTCE (n = 97), and no substance exposure (n = 69) matched on age and education. Substance exposure was assessed using multiple methods, maternal negative emotional functioning via self-reports, parenting with observations, and child ER using teacher, maternal, and lab assessor reports. Results supported a chronic risk pathway with less support for a parasympathetic pathway. Toddlers who demonstrated respiratory sinus arrhythmia withdrawal to frustration were susceptible to the positive context of sensitive parenting in predicting higher ER. Results emphasize the importance of chronicity of postnatal risks including substance exposure and evaluating the differential impact of positive environments for children with substance exposure.
... Parental sensitivity plays an important role in a wide range of child developmental outcomes (e.g., Fraley et al., 2013;Lucassen et al., 2015;Mesman et al., 2012;Raby et al., 2015;Zeegers et al., 2017). The World Health Organization (WHO) therefore recommends to provide sensitive caregiving for all young children and to support parents with 2013; Tryphonopoulos et al., 2016). ...
... Existing instruments often lack reports on predictive validity (Lotzin et al., 2015), despite ample evidence for associations of parental sensitivity with a range of child developmental outcomes. For instance, parental sensitivity has been found associated with later externalizing behavior problems (McCarty et al., 2005;Miner & Clarke-Stewart, 2008), internalizing problems (Kok et al., 2013), and social competence (Fraley et al., 2013;Raby et al., 2015). In the current study, the associations between parental sensitivity and these three child developmental outcomes will be compared between the novel instrument and the NICHD-benchmark rating scale (research question 3). ...
... Parental sensitivity as assessed with neither the OK! package nor with the NICHD Parental Sensitivity rating scales statistically predicted externalizing behavior problems, internalizing problems, and social competence when children were 4 and 7 years old. Although this indicates comparable findings on predictive validity for the two instruments, the lack of predictive validity was not consistent with associations found in previous studies (Fraley et al., 2013;Kok et al., 2013;McCarty et al., 2005;Miner & Clarke-Stewart, 2008;Raby et al., 2015). These studies, however, mostly made use of rather large study samples of more than 1300 motherchild dyads in which the studies found small to modest effects. ...
Improving parental sensitivity is an important objective of interventions to support families. This study examined reliability and validity of parental sensitivity ratings using a novel package of an e‐learning tool and an interactive decision tree provided through a mobile application, called the OK! package. Independent raters assessed parental sensitivity using the OK! package ( N = 11 raters) and the NICHD Parental Sensitivity rating scales ( N = 22 raters) on the basis of videotaped mother‐child interactions at 10‐ or 12‐months‐old ( N = 294) and at 24‐months‐old ( N = 204) from the Dutch longitudinal cohort study Generation ² . Mothers reported on children's externalizing and internalizing problems and social competence when children were 4 and 7 years old. Results showed excellent single interrater reliability for raters using the OK! package (mean ICC = .79), and strong evidence for convergent validity at 10‐ or 12‐month‐old ( r = .57) and 24‐month‐old ( r = .65). Prospective associations of neither parental sensitivity rated using the OK! package or the NICHD Parental Sensitivity rating scales with child developmental outcomes were statistically significant ( p > .05), with overlapping 95% confidence intervals for both measures. The OK! package provides a promising direction for testing alternatives to current training and instruction modalities.
... There have been numerous studies conducted by our research group using the MLSRA and SECCYD data sets. The most relevant to this registration are those with a focus on the predictive significance of early maternal sensitivity in relation to the same outcomes to be studied here (e.g., Fraley et al., 2013;Haltigan et al., 2013;Raby et al., 2015Raby et al., , 2019Roisman & Fraley, 2012). Because the current registered set of analyses is building on prior work with these data sets, the sets of outcome variables to be used in this study will be nearly identical to those used in the studies cited above, with caveats noted above and below. ...
... At the time of preregistration (and before analyses), none of the authors were aware of how strongly early attachment security was associated with the four outcome domains in these data sets except by way of the limited data on these associations reflected in the meta-analyses by Fearon and colleagues (2010) and Groh and colleagues (2012Groh and colleagues ( , 2014Groh and colleagues ( , 2017. Authors were aware of how stable the dependent measures are within construct (by informant) from prior published analyses of the predictive significance of early maternal sensitivity (e.g., Raby et al., 2015). Despite prior meta-analytic work investigating the predictive significance of the Strange Situation Procedure, no single report to date has comprehensively examined the predictive validity of early attachment operationalized with multiple methods at multiple time points to socioemotional and academic outcomes through adulthood in the SECCYD and MLSRA samples. ...
... The outcome measures and variables highlighted in this report were also predetermined in the registration (see Caldo et al., 2020). We selected variables that had been highlighted in prior work on the MLSRA and SECCYD cohorts that focused on the predictive significance of early maternal sensitivity (e.g., Fraley et al., 2013;Raby et al., 2015), allowing us to parallel the approach taken in prior work. ...
Meta-analyses demonstrate that the quality of early attachment is modestly associated with peer social competence ( r = .19) and externalizing behavior ( r = −.15), but weakly associated with internalizing symptoms ( r = −.07) across early development (Groh et al., Child Development Perspectives, 11 (1), 70–76, 2017). Nonetheless, these reviews suffer from limitations that undermine confidence in reported estimates, including evidence for publication bias and the lack of comprehensive assessments of outcome measures from longitudinal studies in the literature. Moreover, theoretical claims regarding the specificity of the predictive significance of early attachment variation for socioemotional versus academic outcomes had not been evaluated when the analyses for this report were registered (but see Dagan et al., Child Development , 1–20, 2023; Deneault et al., Developmental Review, 70 , 101093, 2023). To address these limitations, we conducted a set of registered analyses to evaluate the predictive validity of infant attachment in two landmark studies of the Strange Situation: the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) and the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD). Across-time composite assessments reflecting teacher report, mother report, and self-reports of each outcome measure were created. Bivariate associations between infant attachment security and socioemotional outcomes in the MLSRA were comparable to, or slightly weaker than, those reported in the recent meta-analyses, whereas those in the SECCYD were weaker for these outcomes. Controlling for four demographic covariates, partial correlation coefficients between infant attachment and all socioemotional outcomes were r ≤ .10 to .15 in both samples. Compositing Strange Situations at ages 12 and 18 months did not substantively alter the predictive validity of the measure in the MLSRA, though a composite measure of three different early attachment measures in the SECCYD did increase predictive validity coefficients. Associations between infant attachment security and academic skills were unexpectedly comparable to (SECCYD) or larger than (MLSRA) those observed with respect to socioemotional outcomes.
... Several such studies support the enduring effects of early life experiences over the revisionist model. For example, early maternal sensitivity has shown to have enduring effects on teacherreported symptoms of psychopathology and teacher-student conflict across childhood and early adolescence Magro et al., 2020), teacher-and mother-reported social competence across childhood and middle adolescence , body mass across childhood and young adulthood (Kunkel et al., 2022), and academic competence across childhood and adulthood Raby et al., 2015). Studies of early abuse and neglect exposure document enduring effects on social and academic competence across childhood and adulthood (Raby et al., 2019). ...
... Another study reported diminishing effects of early maternal sensitivity in relation to blood pressure and mother-reported psychopathology symptoms from childhood to early adolescence . A third study revealed that, when important child and mother characteristics were included, the effect of early maternal sensitivity for social competence from childhood (teacher-reported competence in peer interactions) to adulthood (self-reported competence in romantic relationships; Raby et al., 2015) was seen accounted for by early socioeconomic factors. A fourth study found no prospective effect of early parental closeness on adolescent selfesteem when effects of concurrent parental closeness in adolescence on adolescent self-esteem were accounted for (Harris et al., 2015). ...
... We build on and extend this body of work in two ways. First, some of these studies did not test the effects of contemporaneous experiences on developmental outcomes (e.g., Raby et al., 2015). Including proximal experiences in the same life domain as the early experience in these competing models provides a more stringent test of the enduring effects model as well as a possible mechanism through which early experiences are carried forward if the revisionist model is supported. ...
Guided by a novel analytic framework, this study investigates the developmental mechanism through which parental warmth is related to young adult depression. Data were from a large sample of participants followed from early adolescence to young adulthood (N = 1,988; 54% female). Using structural equation modeling, we estimated and compared competing developmental models – enduring effects vs. revisionist models – to assess whether parental warmth during adolescence had enduring or transient effects on depression in young adulthood. We also examined whether contemporaneous experiences of parental warmth in young adulthood were more salient than parental warmth in adolescence. Results supported the revisionist model: early intergenerational experiences in adolescence predicted psychopathology early in young adulthood, but their unique effects gradually diminished; whereas parental warmth in young adulthood continued to be protective of young adult depression. Effects of mother and father warmth on young adult depression were similar in pattern and magnitude. Results were held when accounting for covariates such as adolescent sex, family income status, and family structure. Young adult mental health interventions may consider targeting maintenance or improvement in parental warmth to help offset the long-term impact of adversity early in life.
... In the context of maternal depressive symptoms, the development of children's social skills is likely impaired. High levels of maternal depressive symptoms could result in mothers' fewer sensitive interactions and also harsher and more unpredictable interactions with their children (Goodman et al., 2020); this could directly affect children's social development (Raby et al., 2015;Shaffer et al., 2009). Moreover, biological risk for depression may predispose young people to social difficulties (Holmes et al., 2012). ...
... The hypothesized indirect paths are likely not independent. As described above, negative parenting behavior is one way by which maternal depressive symptoms are theorized to be associated with children's social skills (Goodman et al., 2020;Raby et al., 2015;Shaffer et al., 2009) and depressive symptoms Goodman & Gotlib, 1999). Also, social difficulties in youth can be both a precursor and a consequence of depressive symptoms (Burt et al., 2008;Dryburgh et al., 2021;Huber et al., 2019;Kochel & Bagwell, 2017;Kupferberg et al., 2016). ...
Adolescent friendships of positive quality promote well-being for decades to come. But what impedes the development of positive friendship quality? The present study examined whether maternal depressive symptoms during early childhood predict children’s friendship quality into adolescence, and whether observed negative parenting behavior and children’s earlier friendship quality, social skills, and their own depressive symptoms in middle childhood mediate these associations. We used six waves of data from a prospective longitudinal community sample (N = 396). The study followed children and their mothers across 13 years from child ages 2–15 years (52% female, 67% White, 26% Black), collecting multi-informant data (from mothers, children, teachers, and behavioral observations). The significance of indirect effects was estimated with structural equation modeling. Exposure to high levels of maternal depressive symptoms in early childhood (child ages 2–5 years) was negatively correlated with children’s later adolescent friendship quality (at age 15). Structural equation models revealed that this association was mediated by children’s poorer social skills (age 7) and friendship quality (age 10). Negative parenting behavior and children’s depressive symptoms did not mediate this association. Maternal depressive symptoms have downstream associations with children’s friendship quality into adolescence, including via children’s social skills. Promoting the social skills of children exposed to maternal depressive symptoms could have long-term positive effects.
... Empirical and meta-analytic studies have con rmed the importance of sensitive caregiving in the rst months of life for the development of children's social-emotional competencies in both normative and high-risk populations 2,[16][17][18][19][20] . Longitudinal studies have shown that maternal sensitivity in infancy shapes the development of secure attachment [21][22][23] , social abilities [24][25][26][27][28] , emotion regulation and social adjustment [29][30][31][32][33] , and cognitive and executive function 34,35 across childhood 28, 35,36 , adolescence 22,24,31,34,37,38 , and adulthood 23,25 . ...
... Empirical and meta-analytic studies have con rmed the importance of sensitive caregiving in the rst months of life for the development of children's social-emotional competencies in both normative and high-risk populations 2,[16][17][18][19][20] . Longitudinal studies have shown that maternal sensitivity in infancy shapes the development of secure attachment [21][22][23] , social abilities [24][25][26][27][28] , emotion regulation and social adjustment [29][30][31][32][33] , and cognitive and executive function 34,35 across childhood 28, 35,36 , adolescence 22,24,31,34,37,38 , and adulthood 23,25 . ...
Caregiving plays a critical role in children's cognitive, emotional, and psychological well-being. In the current longitudinal study, we investigated the enduring effects of early maternal behavior on processes of interbrain synchrony in adolescence. Mother-infant naturalistic interactions were filmed when infants were 3 months old and interactions were coded for maternal sensitivity and intrusiveness using the Coding Interactive Behavior. In early adolescence (Mean = 12.30, SD = 1.25), mother-adolescent interbrain synchrony was measured using hyperscanning EEG during a naturalistic interaction of positive valance. Consistent with prior hyperscanning research, we focused on interbrain connections within the right frontotemporal network. Results indicate that maternal sensitivity in early infancy was longitudinally associated with interbrain synchrony in the right frontotemporal network. Post-hoc comparisons highlighted enhancement of mother-adolescent frontal-frontal connectivity, a connection implicated in parent-child social communication. In contrast, maternal intrusiveness in infancy linked with attenuation of interbrain synchrony in the right frontotemporal network. Sensitivity and intrusiveness are key maternal social orientations that are individually stable in the mother-child relationship from infancy to adulthood and foreshadow children's positive and negative social-emotional outcomes, respectively. Our findings are the first to demonstrate that these two maternal orientations play a role in enhancing or attenuating the child's frontotemporal interbrain network that sustains social communication and affiliation. Results suggest that the long-term impact of the mother's sensitive and intrusive style may relate, in part, to its effects on tuning the child's interbrain network to sociality.
... Empirical studies have consistently demonstrated that the quality of early caregiving experiences with parents has enduring effects on children's healthy adaptation, encompassing relationship functioning, academic competence, psychological adjustment, and even physical health (e.g., Cooke et al., 2022;Farrell et al., 2019;Felitti et al., 1998;Posada et al., 2016;Sroufe et al., 2005). Specifically, sensitive parenting, characterized by supportive, warm, and contingent responses to children's needs (Ainsworth et al., 1978), has been linked to healthy adaptation and adjustment into the years of maturity (e.g., Fraley et al., 2013;Haltigan et al., 2013;Kunkel et al., 2022;Lorber & Egeland, 2009;Raby et al., 2015;van der Voort et al., 2014;Yang et al., in, press). ...
... Adolescents' friendship quality is influenced by various ecological factors (Procidano & Smith, 1997;Way & Greene, 2006). Sensitive parenting and attachment, in particular, have been identified as crucial factors shaping adolescents' competence and satisfaction in interpersonal relationships (Allen & Tan, 2016;Bowlby, 1969Bowlby, /1982Furman & Rose, 2015;Schneider et al., 2001;Raby et al., 2015). For example, a meta-analysis of studies between 1970 and 1998 found that, compared to insecurely attached children, children with secure attachment were more likely to experience higher-quality friendships, and the effects were largest for close friendships (Schneider et al., 2001). ...
Leveraging data from a longitudinal study of Chinese families ( n = 364), this research aims to understand the role of secure base script knowledge as a cognitive mechanism by which early caregiving experiences inform adolescents’ friendship quality and feelings of loneliness. Results showed that observed maternal sensitivity at 14 and 24 months old was negatively associated with adolescents’ self‐reported conflicts with close friends ( β = −0.17, p = 0.044) at 15 years old, and this association was partially mediated by their secure base script knowledge assessed at 10 years old. Further, secure base script knowledge moderated the link between adolescents’ friend conflict and feelings of loneliness ( β = −0.15, p = 0.037). The results support a cognitive script perspective on the association between early caregiving experiences and later socio‐emotional adjustment. Furthermore, this study adds to the developmental literature that has previously focused on more stringent and authoritarian aspects of parenting in Chinese families, thereby contributing to our understanding of how sensitive and supportive parenting practices contribute to socio‐emotional development outside of Western contexts.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
Maternal sensitivity during infancy and toddlerhood has a long‐term association with adolescents’ friendship quality and adolescents' secure base script partially explains the association.
First evidence to demonstrate that the secure base script in attachment relationships mediates the association between early maternal caregiving and socio‐emotional development in Chinese adolescents.
Adolescents lacking secure base script knowledge are particularly vulnerable to feelings of loneliness when facing high levels of conflict in close friendships.
... It extends current knowledge by providing evidence that such processes generalize beyond attachment relationships to other, more general socioemotional contexts. Despite the well-established link between the quality of early attachment relationships and later social adjustment 19 , the mechanisms underlying these effects are still poorly understood, with some studies proposing sensory over-responsivity 47 and emotion (dys-)regulation 48 as mediators. Our findings provide initial physiological evidence that one possible mechanism through which early attachment has an enduring effect on individuals' psychological 17,49 could be through physiological profiles, namely hyperactivation of the sympathetic nervous system, established in the earliest caregiving interactions which are activated during times of distress. ...
Early attachment relationships exert lasting effects on psychophysical health across the lifespan. Limited behavioral evidence suggests that these effects stem from how individuals perceive, interpret, and respond to their environment. This study investigated whether adults’ attachment representations modulate autonomic responses to happy and sad facial expressions, evidenced by changes in pupil size. We utilized a sample of healthy adults (N = 100; 68% females, 18–35 years, prevalently White European). In an eye-tracking experiment, we assessed pupil dilation to happy and sad facial expressions (n = 152 trials). Dismissing and preoccupied attachment orientations were assessed as continuous dimensions via self-report. Linear mixed models revealed that individuals with higher scores on dismissing orientations exhibited a significant increase in pupil dilation in response to sad and not happy expressions. No significant effects were observed for preoccupied orientations, age, or sex. These findings suggest that individuals with increased scores on dismissing attachment show heightened arousal to negative emotions.
... Dans une séquence d'articles portant sur la prédiction longitudinale du développement à partir de mesures d'attachement durant la petite enfance, Sroufe, Carlson et leurs collègues démontrent que l'attachement désorganisé et l'attachement évitant sont de meilleurs prédicteurs de l'adaptation psychologique à l'adolescence et chez les jeunes adultes que ne le sont un ensemble d'autres facteurs incluant des facteurs évalués de manière concomitante (Sroufe, Carlson, Levy, & Egeland, 1999;Carlson et al., 2004). Les suites de cette étude longitudinale démontrent des liens significatifs entre la qualité des comportements d'interactions en bas âge et le développement cognitif et social de l'enfant en tant qu'adulte de plus de 30 ans (Raby, Roisman, Fraley, & Simpson, 2015). En somme, une évaluation structurée de l'attachement semble donner un aperçu de la trajectoire de développement dans laquelle l'enfant est engagé. ...
... Positive parenting behaviors may include being warm and responsive, providing positive reinforcement, setting limits, providing support and scaffolding, and autonomy granting. Such positive parenting practices are associated with more optimal child development [20,45]. Negative parenting includes harsh, hostile, or withdrawn parenting behaviors, the use of physical control or punishment, and parental laxness or inconsistent limit setting. ...
Background
Dialectical Behavior Therapy’s (DBT) well established effectiveness in reducing emotion dysregulation, and the growing recognition that parental emotion regulation is critical to effective parenting has led to increasing interest in the applicability of DBT skills to parenting. Efforts to integrate DBT and parenting interventions would benefit from an empirical examination of which DBT skills are most useful to parents with emotion dysregulation.
Methods
This study used clinician-rated observational coding of skill use examples that were provided by mothers with severe emotion dysregulation (n = 16) who participated in a standard 48-week DBT Skills Training (DBT-ST) program in the context of a larger randomized controlled trial (NCT03060902). Mothers described their use of DBT skills during the homework review portion of DBT-ST sessions and video-recordings were then examined and coded to identify which DBT skills mothers most frequently described using in parenting situations (vs. non-parenting situations) and which skills were used to either increase positive parenting behaviors or to decrease negative parenting behaviors.
Results
A total of 220 skill use examples were coded and approximately one-quarter described skill use in parenting situations. Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, and Emotion Regulation skills were the most frequently described skills used in parenting situations, while Interpersonal Effectiveness skills were rarely coded. Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation skills were most often coded when mothers’ parenting goal was to increase positive parenting, while Distress Tolerance skills were most often coded when mothers’ parenting goal was to decrease negative parenting behaviors.
Conclusions
Results provide an empirical basis which clinicians and treatment developers can use when selecting DBT skills to apply towards parenting challenges.
... The parent-child relationship is one of the most influential determinants in children's and adolescents' life (Collins et al., 2000). Today, a plethora of evidence indicates that parents, who are capable to adapt their behaviors closely to their children's needs and demands, create an environment that supports children's well-being and socioemotional and cognitive development (Baumrind, 1991;Gniewosz et al., 2022;Raby et al., 2015). Dysfunctional parent-child relationships, by contrast, are associated with children's risk for both internalizing problems, such as anxiety or depressive symptoms, and externalizing problems, such as antisocial or aggressive behavior (Fletcher et al., 2004;Gallitto, 2015;Padilla-Walker et al., 2016;Patterson et al., 1989;Zhou et al., 2002). ...
Grandiose narcissism has been shown to interfere with the establishment of long-lasting relationships. Evidence on whether grandiose narcissism negatively affects the parent-child relationship, however, is less conclusive. Using data from a large, nationwide sample in Germany, the present study investigated the cross-sectional and longitudinal links between the agentic and antagonistic facets of grandiose narcissism and multiple indicators of the parent-child relationship. Results of multilevel analyses showed that particularly antagonistic narcissism was cross-sectionally, but not longitudinally, associated with a decreased level of intimacy and parental admiration within the parent-child relationship. Antagonistic narcissism was also cross-sectionally linked to reduced parental warmth and increased negative communication. These effects were observed across parent and child reports, underscoring the robustness of the results. The study highlights the importance of considering grandiose narcissism’s role in the parent-child relationship, suggesting that particularly antagonistic narcissism is associated with a dysfunctional family environment.
... Parental sensitivity involves paying attention to subtle cues related to children's focus of attention, and this is thought to build the neural architecture that is key to children's developmental success , including academic success (Romeo et al., 2018). The association between maternal sensitivity and children's cognitive outcomes has been demonstrated using longitudinal designs and meta-analysis Madigan et al., 2019;Raby, Roisman, Fraley, & Simpson, 2015). ...
Background
This longitudinal study with multi‐informant (maternal, paternal, and experimenter) and multimethod (questionnaires, behavioral observations, and standardized assessments) data tests an intergenerational model from mothers' adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) to their children's socio‐emotional and cognitive outcomes.
Methods
Participants were 501 children (50.7% male) and caregivers (56.5% white) followed from child age 2 months to 5 years. Mothers reported on their ACEs, as well as their postnatal socio‐economic status (SES), marital conflict, and depressive symptoms. Observers rated maternal sensitivity using validated coding systems. Partners' history of childhood conduct problems and children's emotional and conduct problems were rated by mothers and fathers, and cognition was assessed by experimenters using standardized assessments.
Results
Maternal ACEs score was associated with children's socio‐emotional and cognitive outcomes through unique intermediary pathways. Specifically, maternal ACEs were related to child emotion problems through SES, paternal history of conduct problems, and maternal depression. Maternal ACEs to child conduct problems operated via SES, paternal history of conduct problems, and marital conflict. Maternal ACEs to child cognitive skills operated through SES and maternal sensitivity.
Conclusions
Maternal ACEs, economic stress, and paternal history of conduct problems may collectively strain families, diverting caregiver attention and resources, which may impact childrearing and children's development. To effectively address root causes of intergenerational risks, it is critical to advocate for resources and supports that mitigate these hardship conditions. In addition, interventions that target modifiable individual and family factors may hold the greatest promise for breaking cycles of generational risk and promoting healthier outcomes for children and families.
... The relevance of parent-child interaction qualities for predicting and understanding developmental outcomes of children is well established (e.g., [33,44,55]). In identifying needs, risks, and protective factors in parent-child interaction, as well as in providing support strategies for this interaction, attachment theory and research has been of great importance. ...
... The effects of later sensitivity on cognition and academics, after controlling for early effects, have received less attention in schoolage children and adolescents (Bradley and Pennar 2011). Fraley, Roisman, and Haltigan (2013) and Raby et al. (2015), for example, concluded that early maternal sensitivity has enduring effects on academic outcomes across childhood and adolescence. Yet the transactional model of development (Sameroff 2009) argues that proximal interactions between a mother and her child foster development suggesting a continuing role for mothers' sensitive parenting supporting children's achievement later in development. ...
Researchers have demonstrated the important contribution of mothers’ sensitive parenting to children's developing cognition over the first 5 years of life, yet studies examining sensitivity beyond the early years, controlling for earlier effects, are limited. In this exploratory study, we examined the developmental pathways through which mothers’ early and later sensitive parenting transacted with children's language, executive function, academics, and self‐reliance to predict child outcomes from infancy to adolescence. To a national longitudinal dataset ( n = 1364; 52% male; 80% white), we applied random intercept cross‐lagged panel modeling to examine between‐person and within‐person associations for maternal sensitivity and child outcomes. Our findings show that over the first 15 years of life relations between maternal sensitivity and these child outcomes are best characterized by stable, trait‐like associations that persist over time with limited state‐like time‐varying associations. Importantly, we found that maternal sensitivity at both early and later developmental stages is associated with these between‐person differences. Given the nature of these associations over four developmental stages, we extend prior research by demonstrating that mothers’ sensitivity is enduring because of its consistency both early and later in development.
... One of the most salient influences on infant adjustment is the quality of the parent-child relationship. High affective attunement and warmth/ sensitivity in the first years of life may be particularly protective and predict lower levels of dysregulation (Raby et al., 2015). The quality of parent-child interactions in early childhood predicts a cascade of risk processes along the externalizing behavior pathway leading to adolescent substance use (Dodge, 2009;Siebenbruner et al., 2006;Sitnick et al., 2014). ...
Introduction: Hazardous drinking by fathers poses a significant risk for negative family interactions and child outcomes. The transition to parenthood may be a time when expectant parents are potentially motivated for health behavior change, suggesting that implementing preventive interventions during this period may be particularly effective. This article provides an overview of the rationale for an innovative prevention strategy incorporating alcohol-use intervention with a family-focused program. Method: We describe the process of integration and adaptation of two evidence-based interventions beginning in pregnancy: (a) Family Foundations, a universal transition-to-parenthood intervention for couples to enhance coparenting and couple dyadic functioning, and (b) brief intervention to address alcohol use delivered using a couples-focused motivational interviewing style. Results: Lessons learned from pilot testing (conducted October 2020–March 2021) included the importance of softened framing of the discussions and language used around alcohol use given that parents were not specifically seeking treatment for alcohol use and the program was described as a parenting program that included discussion of health behaviors, including drinking. In addition, we found that evoking discussion and communication within dyads and supporting autonomy in decision making regarding alcohol use also facilitated engagement. Conclusion: Pilot testing demonstrated the acceptability and feasibility of an adapted, integrated intervention program designed to strengthen coparenting skills and dyadic functioning and promote lower risk levels of alcohol use among couples during the transition to parenthood.
... Moreover, parental substance abuse may have a particularly strong negative effect on children's emotional and behavioral adjustment during this developmental period (Salo & Flykt, 2013), which can increase risk for child psychopathology (for review, see Velleman & Templeton, 2007). Furthermore, parental harshness during early childhood not only affects risk for psychopathology during this developmental period but can also have a lasting effect on adjustment during adolescence and adulthood (Raby, Roisman, Fraley, & Simpson, 2015). When consolidating these notions, it is vital to further understand the association between maternal alcohol dependence and harsh parenting among mothers with young children. ...
Children of parents with substance use disorders often experience many adverse psychological and socioemotional outcomes. Although these outcomes are well-known, it remains unclear why and how parental substance use problems undermines children’s development and well-being. This project comprises three studies collectively aimed at identifying and unpacking the underlying processes, mechanisms, and factors influencing links between maternal alcohol dependence symptoms and children’s psychopathology. All studies used a predominantly Black and Latinx sample of 201 mother-child dyads (Mchild age = 2.14 years). Study 1 examined whether
and how maternal alcohol dependence symptoms differentially affected mothers’ engagement in harsh parenting behaviors across two parenting situations (a discipline task and an unstructured free-play task). The potential moderating role of children’s temperamental emotionality(anger/frustration vs. fearfulness) was also examined. Findings revealed that maternal alcohol dependence predicted increases in harsh parenting over time in the discipline task only, specifically among mothers whose children displayed high levels of anger and frustration. Study 2 examined how maternal alcohol dependence symptoms impacts mothers’ responses to
children’s emotional distress and the effect these responses have on children’s development of anxiety and depression. Results showed that maternal alcohol dependence symptoms interfere with mothers’ ability to emotionally connect with and therefore respond to children’s emotional distress which increases children’s risk for future depressive symptoms. Building on Study 2, Study 3 investigates how maternal alcohol dependence symptoms impact on mothers’ responses to children’s distress influence children’s emotion regulation. Findings suggest that alcohol dependence symptoms predict maladaptive maternal responses to children’s emotional distress
which subsequently predict children’s suppression rather than expression of emotions like sadness or fear, which could explain the aforementioned increase in children’s depressive symptoms over time. Collectively, findings pinpoint specific mechanisms and longitudinal pathways through which distinct parenting challenges and types of child psychopathology may manifest within families struggling with maternal alcohol dependence. This helps identify potential targets of interventions for those interested in promoting positive developmental outcomes and improving well-being among children within these families. Findings also implicate ways we can help mothers with substance use problems improve their parenting, enhance parent-child relationships, and construct and maintain optimal developmental environments.
... Numerous studies have suggested maternal sensitivity has enduring effects on various aspects of children's development. These include brain morphology (Bernier et al., 2019), the formation of secure attachment (see a review in Zeegers et al., 2017), language development (Bornstein et al., 2020), and socioemotional adjustment (Raby et al., 2015). Our study joins research efforts to identify mechanisms that shape maternal sensitivity and suggests the accumulation of ACEs may be a factor underlying this aspect of parenting. ...
Research points to the substantial impact of parents' exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on parents and their children. However, most studies have been conducted in North America, and research on ACEs effects on observed parenting or on intergenerational transmission of ACE effects is limited. We therefore studied families from diverse ethnocultural backgrounds in Israel and examined whether mothers’ ACEs hampered maternal sensitivity and the quality of the home environment and whether mothers’ psychological distress mediated these links. We also explored whether mothers’ ACEs predicted children’s behavior problems indirectly through maternal psychological distress and whether maternal sensitivity and the home environment attenuated this mediating path. Participants were 232 mothers ( M child age = 18.40 months, SD = 1.76; 63.36% non-ultra-Orthodox Jewish, 17.24% ultra-Orthodox Jewish, 19.40% Arab Muslim). Results showed mothers’ ACEs were directly associated with decreased maternal sensitivity. Mothers’ ACEs were indirectly associated with more behavior problems in children through mothers’ higher psychological distress, and maternal sensitivity moderated this indirect link; it was significant only for mothers who showed lower sensitivity. Findings emphasize the significant role ACEs play in early mother-child relationships. The importance of including ACE assessment in research and practice with families of infants and toddlers is discussed.
... Infants communicate their need for adequate care through subtle social cues (Fonagy et al., 2007). The sensitivity of a parent to interpret and suitably respond to these cues, while adapting regularly to meet the infant's evolving needs, is a strong predictor of children's socio-emotional and cognitive development (Raby et al., 2015). A critical element to achieve this is the parent's "mindmindedness," defined as the caregiver's ability to comprehend their infant's internal states and acknowledge the infant as a distinct entity with independent thoughts and emotions (Meins et al., 2001;Meins, 1997). ...
Previous studies show that maternal mind-mindedness positively impacts children’s social development. In the current studies, we examine the relation between mind-mindedness during parent–child interaction, oxytocin (OT), and postnatal depression in a sample of mothers ( N = 62, ages 23–44) and their infant (ages 3–9 months). In Study 1, infant salivary OT was positively correlated with mothers’ appropriate mind-related comments, and negatively correlated (at trend level) with maternal depression scores. Mothers experiencing symptoms of depression used fewer appropriate mind-related comments than controls. Study 2 was a double-blind, placebo-controlled, experimental study, in which the same women who participated in Study 1 were administered nasal OT. This did not significantly influence levels of mind-mindedness. Study 2 warrants a larger trial to investigate the effect of OT on mind-mindedness further. Study 1 is the first to demonstrate an association between maternal mind-mindedness and variation in children’s OT levels. Since both OT and mind-mindedness have been repeatedly implicated in processes of maternal–infant attachment, this association highlights the centrality of mothers’ caregiving representations in facilitating the parent–child relationship and children’s early development.
... In terms of associations with later development and autism (research questions 3 and 4), linear model analyses revealed a significant phenotypic association between parents' sensitive responsiveness in the free-play interaction during the child's infancy and these later developmental traits (social communication, language, and autistic traits) during the child's toddlerhood. This is in line with the central role that is often assigned to sensitive responsiveness in supporting further development (Rocha et al., 2020), even into adulthood (Raby, Roisman, Fraley, & Simpson, 2015). The association was weak in this sample, but it is possible that it is stronger in children at elevated likelihood of autism (Mandy & Lai, 2016;Wan et al., 2019), a group for which there is some evidence that parent-directed early intervention can have positive effects (Green et al., 2017). ...
Background
Characteristics of parent‐child interaction (PCI) early in life have been associated with later development in the child. Twin studies can help to disentangle child contributions to parent‐child interaction, for example, by assessing the influence of the child's genetics on his/her social environment, which includes parental behaviour.
Methods
Infant twins from a community sample [354 monozygotic (MZ), 268 same‐sex dizygotic (DZ)] were assessed in terms of PCI at age 5 months. We used the classical twin design to map the aetiology of several parent and child PCI scales and their covariation. We investigated the relations between PCI and later parent‐rated child's social communication, language, and autistic traits at ages 2 and 3.
Results
Heritability was below 20% for all the included PCI traits. Unique (nonshared) environmental influences substantially overlapped across several PCI scales, suggesting that idiosyncrasies linked to each session shaped the scoring of several traits in a systematic way. Factor analysis revealed three uncorrelated latent factors, which were conceptualized as ‘child negative affect’, ‘positive affective interaction’, and ‘parent's supportive strategies’. Parents who were rated highly on ‘sensitive responsiveness’ at 5 months tended to rate their offspring higher in terms of socio‐communicative and language development and lower in terms of autistic traits in the second and third years of life.
Conclusions
This study maps the phenotypic and aetiological structure of PCI in early infancy and supports the view that parents' sensitive responsiveness towards their infant is associated with later developmental gains in several domains. We did not find strong evidence of any so‐called evocative genetic effects on parents’ behaviour. We discuss the results considering the general challenge for lab‐based observational PCI measures to capture the richness of parent‐child interaction.
... Attuned and responsive caregiving builds attachments and trains the infant's social brain (Atzil et al., 2018;Feldman, 2012aFeldman, , 2012b. Positive relationships with caregivers are the building blocks for subsequent relationships and child outcomes (Atzil et al., 2018;Black et al., 2021;DePasquale & Gunnar, 2020;NASEM, 2019aNASEM, , 2019bRaby et al., 2015). The experience of physiological and behavioural synchrony experienced within early attachments during the critical period of gestation-to-weaning plays an important role in the individual's capacity to form friendships and engage in meaningful relationships throughout life (Feldman, 2012a(Feldman, , 2012b. ...
This Working Paper describes the core care conditions that young children, their parents / caregivers and their families need to flourish. Core care conditions are the key features of the social and physical environments in which young children and their families live that are important for optimal development and functioning.
The paper is intended for policymakers and practitioners who are designing and delivering services and supports to young children and their families. It seeks to broaden the scope of what such efforts involve, to go beyond the provision of services to include all the environmental features known to shape development and functioning. The paper seeks to identify these developmental circumstances or conditions so we can use them as a template for reconfiguring the early years environment to ensure that all young children and their families are provided with these conditions.
... The outcomes of these programs have been significant, showing improvements in parenting skills and reductions in child victimization [36]. Additionally, proficient parenting skills act as a protective mechanism, reducing the risk of children facing mental health challenges [37]. While many parenting education programs focus on conveying specific information and skills, they often overlook critical aspects of interventions for parents concerning cyber-bystander behaviors. ...
Background
Group-based situations are common settings for cyberbullying, making bystander responses crucial in combating this issue. This study investigated how adolescent bystanders respond to various victims, including family members, friends, teachers, and celebrities. This study also examined how different parenting styles influenced children’s cyber bystander involvement.
Methods
This study employed data from a cross-sectional school survey covering 1,716 adolescents aged 13–18 years from public and vocational schools in China collected in 2022. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to measure demographic characteristics, cyberbullying experiences, and parental rearing behaviors in predicting bystander reactions.
Results
The findings showed that middle school students preferred to “ask for help” while high school students tended to choose “call the police” when witnessing cyberbullying incidents. Bystanders growing up with parental rejection and overprotection, having previous cyberbullying victimization experiences, where the victims were disliked by them, exhibited fewer defensive reactions.
Conclusions
This study has implications for future research and practices involving parental involvement in cyber bystander interventions, which could provide implications for future practice in designing specific intervention programs for cyberbullying bystander behavior. Future research and interventions against cyberbullying may provide individualized training including parents’ positive parenting skills and parent-child interactions.
... Indeed, sensitive responsiveness plays an important role in promoting children's socioemotional developmental outcomes (Cooke et al., 2022;Rodrigues et al., 2021) across the life course (Fraley et al., 2013;Raby et al., 2015). Meta-analytic data has found that sensitive responsiveness in caregivers is associated with lower internalizing and externalizing problems in children (Cooke et al., 2022). ...
The current meta-analysis examined the mediating role of sensitive-responsive parenting in the relationship between depression in mothers and internalizing and externalizing behavior in children. A systematic review of the path of maternal sensitive responsiveness to child psychopathology identified eligible studies. Meta-analytic structural equation modelling (MASEM) allowed for the systematic examination of the magnitude of the indirect effect across 68 studies (N = 15,579) for internalizing and 92 studies (N = 26,218) for externalizing psychopathology. The synthesized sample included predominantly White, English-speaking children (age range = 1 to 205 months; Mage = 66 months; 47% female) from Western, industrialized countries. The indirect pathway was small in magnitude and similar for externalizing (b = .02) and internalizing psychopathology (b = .01). Moderator analyses found that the indirect pathway for externalizing problems was stronger when mother-child interactions were observed during naturalistic and free-play tasks rather than structured tasks. Other tested moderators were not significant.
... In this exploratory study, they found a large association between maternal sensitivity and secure child attachment, an association that has been replicated in larger, well-controlled studies. Researchers have also gone on to demonstrate that caregiver sensitivity has wideranging impacts beyond child attachment, including associations with child language (Madigan et al., 2019), cognitive functioning , prosocial skills (Rodrigues et al., 2021), socioemotional functioning (Cooke et al., 2022), executive functioning (Valcan et al., 2018), and academic achievement (Raby et al., 2015). Accordingly, interventions that target caregiver sensitivity have been developed and implemented worldwide, with evidence of effectiveness for improving sensitivity, promoting attachment security, and reducing child externalizing behaviors (Bakermans-Kranenburg et al., 2003;O'Farrelly et al., 2021;. ...
Sensitive caregiving behavior, which involves the ability to notice, interpret, and quickly respond to a child’s signals of need and/or interest, is a central determinant of secure child–caregiver attachment. Yet, significant heterogeneity in effect sizes exists across the literature, and sources of heterogeneity have yet to be explained. For all child–caregiver dyads, there was a significant and positive pooled association between caregiver sensitivity and parent–child attachment (r = .25, 95% CI [.22, .28], k = 174, 230 effect sizes, N = 22,914). We also found a positive association between maternal sensitivity and child attachment security (r = .26, 95% CI [.22, .29], k = 159, 202 effect sizes, N = 21,483), which was equivalent in magnitude to paternal sensitivity and child attachment security (r = .21, 95% CI [.14, 27], k = 22, 23 effect sizes, N = 1,626). Maternal sensitivity was also negatively associated with all three classifications of insecure attachment (avoidant: k = 43, r = −.24 [−.34, −.13]; resistant: k = 43, r = −.12 [−.19, −.06]; disorganized: k = 24, r = −.19 [−.27, −.11]). For maternal sensitivity, associations were larger in studies that used the Attachment Q-Sort (vs. the Strange Situation), used the Maternal Behavior Q-Sort (vs. Ainsworth or Emotional Availability Scales), had strong (vs. poor) interrater measurement reliability, had a longer observation of sensitivity, and had less time elapse between assessments. For paternal sensitivity, associations were larger in older (vs. younger) fathers and children. These findings confirm the importance of both maternal and paternal sensitivity for the development of child attachment security and add understanding of the methodological and substantive factors that allow this effect to be observed.
... Ainsworth identified that individual differences in caregivers' ability to notice infant/child signals, interpret these signals correctly, and respond to these signals promptly and appropriately (i.e., caregiver sensitivity) was a core contributor to the formation of infant/child attachment expectations (Ainsworth et al., 1974). Abundant evidence indicates that sensitive caregiving links to children's positive adjustments across domains, including executive functioning skills, emotion regulation, social skills, academic achievement, and behavior problems (e.g., Cooke et al., 2022;Raby et al., 2015;Rodrigues et al., 2021). ...
A growing body of literature shows that adherence to some aspects of Western masculinity norms, including the suppression of emotional vulnerability, avoidance of seeking support from others, and exaggerated physical toughness, is associated with poorer psychological and social outcomes. While existing research suggests that parental gender beliefs and caregiving behaviors might influence the development of children’s gendered behaviors, little is known about the developmental origins of individual differences in adherence to masculinity norms. The current study aims to address this gap and presents a longitudinal investigation of how parental gender beliefs and maternal sensitivity during infancy contribute to children’s adherence to masculinity norms during middle childhood. Data were drawn from a mixed-method 9-year longitudinal study of 374 urban Chinese families (48.40% with daughters). Parental gender beliefs were assessed at 24 months, maternal sensitivity was assessed with mother–child interaction observations at 14 and 24 months, and children’s self-reported adherence to masculinity norms were assessed at age 10 years. Results indicate that while parental gender beliefs had no associations with children’s adherence to masculinity norms, maternal sensitivity predicted children’s adherence to masculinity norms (β = −.18, p = .008) above and beyond parental gender beliefs and parental education level; moreover, there was a significant interaction of sex on the effect of maternal sensitivity on children’s adherence to masculinity (β = −.23, p = .025), and the association was significant only for boys.
... Although initially designed to examine the etiology of childhood maltreatment, the MLSRA has contributed to the literature on developmental psychology literature in a number of areas, including infant-mother attachments (e.g., Egeland & Sroufe, 1981;Egeland & Farber, 1984), peer and romantic relationship functioning (e.g., Collins et. al., 1997), physical and mental health (e.g., Puig et al., 2013;Sroufe, 1997), and academic and work performance (Collins & van Dulmen, 2006;Raby et al., 2014) through midlife. The goals of this narrative review are to return to the maltreatment origins of the project to summarize the early history of the MLSRA and some of its contributions to the field of child maltreatment and to synthesize key findings based on recently updated coding of childhood abuse and neglect experienced by some of the now adult children who have participated in this study for almost five decades. ...
The Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) is a landmark prospective, longitudinal study of human development focused on a sample of mothers experiencing poverty and their firstborn children. Although the MLSRA pioneered a number of important topics in the area of social and emotional development, it began with the more specific goal of examining the antecedents of child maltreatment. From that foundation and for more than 40 years, the study has produced a significant body of research on the origins, sequelae, and measurement of childhood abuse and neglect. The principal objectives of this report are to document the early history of the MLSRA and its contributions to the study of child maltreatment and to review and summarize results from the recently updated childhood abuse and neglect coding of the cohort, with particular emphasis on findings related to adult adjustment. While doing so, we highlight key themes and contributions from Dr Dante Cicchetti’s body of research and developmental psychopathology perspective to the MLSRA, a project launched during his tenure as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota.
... Our findings established a direct correlation between exposure to emotional abuse or emotional neglect and the ability to recover from stress. Previous studies suggested that the type of emotional support received in childhood has a profound impact on adult life (59)(60)(61)(62)(63). One of the reasons emotional supports is so influential in stress recovery during adulthood is its association with resilience. ...
Background
Childhood trauma exerts enduring impacts on the physical and psychological well-being of individuals in adulthood, influencing their daily functioning. This study aims to investigate the impact of childhood trauma on stress recovery in adults, concentrating on heart rate variations during acute stress exposure.
Methods
A cohort of 126 participants completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and underwent the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) to elicit acute stress, with continuous heart rate (HR) monitoring for stress recovery assessment.
Results
The results revealed a negative correlation between childhood trauma and stress recovery, prominently observed in instances of emotional neglect and abuse. Individuals with heightened childhood trauma exhibited protracted stress recovery following acute stress exposure.
Conclusion
Childhood traumatic experiences were associated with the recovery from acute stress, as indicated by heart rate indices. These findings contribute to the foundational framework for psychological interventions tailored to individuals with a history of childhood trauma.
... psychopathology risk (e.g., Beauchaine et al., 2010;Raby et al., 2015). However, continuity models often overlook the potential impact of experiences during the intervening years, at times regarding the adolescent developmental period as little more than a waystation on the path to adulthood. ...
The loss of John Schulenberg reverberates across the developmental and prevention sciences. In honor of his many contributions, this paper applies his ideas of developmental continuity and discontinuity to understand the process by which PROSPER delivered universal prevention programs (delivered in Grades 6 and 7) affect young adult outcomes. Guided by these developmental models, we deconstructed adolescent substance use initiation trajectories into two discrete phases–early and late adolescence, demarcated by substance use initiation levels at the end of 9th grade. We evaluated the effects of PROSPER interventions on these phases, and in turn, the effects of adolescent substance use initiation on young adult antisocial behavior, alcohol and drug use consequences, and depression symptoms. This sample included 1,984 young adults who participated in the PROSPER intervention trial in Grade 6 (two cohorts, 2002 and 2003), followed over 8 adolescent measurement occasions (Fall and Spring of Grade 6; Spring of Grades 7–12). Young adult outcomes were averaged across three waves (collected at ages 20, 23, and 25). PROSPER interventions were associated with reduced substance use initiation in early adolescence, but not escalation during late adolescence. In turn, substance use in both early and late adolescence was uniquely associated with young adult antisocial behavior, depression symptoms, and substance use consequences. PROSPER interventions were associated with young adult antisocial behavior and problematic substance use via reduced risk for early initiation status. Findings are discussed in terms of developmental continuity and discontinuity.
... The work of Dante Cicchetti and colleagues (e.g., Cicchetti et al., 2000Cicchetti et al., , 2006Russotti et al., 2021;Toth et al., 2006) has illuminated the importance of early experience in setting the stage for later developmental outcomes. Early experience is not deterministic but rather sets the young child on a trajectory with subsequent skills and experiences dependent on these early capabilities (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010;Raby et al., 2015). As Masten and Cicchetti (2010) pointed out, well-timed interventions that address critical targets have the opportunity to alter problematic trajectories. ...
Dante Cicchetti, the architect of developmental psychopathology, has influenced so many of us in profound ways. One of his many contributions was in demonstrating the power of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to study the effects of Child–Parent Psychotherapy (CPP). These RCTs have shed light on causal mechanisms in development. Following Cicchetti and colleagues’ work, we designed a brief home visiting program, Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), to help parents respond in sensitive, nurturing ways, so as to enhance children’s attachment and self-regulatory capabilities. In the current study, we assessed adolescents’ reports of the closeness of their relationships with their mothers 12 years after their mothers completed the intervention. A total of 142 adolescents participated (47 randomized to ABC, 45 randomized to a control intervention, and 50 from a low-risk comparison group). Adolescents whose mothers had been randomized to ABC reported closer relationships with their mothers than adolescents randomized to the control condition, with significant differences seen on approval, support, companionship, and emotional support subscales. Consistent with Cicchetti et al.’s work, these results provide powerful evidence of the long-term effects of an early parenting intervention.
... More specifically, the relationship between emotional and/or physical abuse and parenting behavior was more robust than other abuse types (child sexual abuse was not statistically significant). The implications of impaired parenting behavior extend to the child's development and well-being such that these children may be more likely to have behavioral problems, poorer adult educational attainment, less positive social behavior, and greater negative affect and defiant noncompliance (Leerkes et al., 2009;Raby et al., 2015). ...
... More specifically, the relationship between emotional and/or physical abuse and parenting behavior was more robust than other abuse types (child sexual abuse was not statistically significant). The implications of impaired parenting behavior extend to the child's development and well-being such that these children may be more likely to have behavioral problems, poorer adult educational attainment, less positive social behavior, and greater negative affect and defiant noncompliance (Leerkes et al., 2009;Raby et al., 2015). ...
This chapter provides an overview of outcomes related to child abuse that may be challenging for child abuse survivors during the perinatal period. In Part 1, general and psychological prenatal health is examined. This includes a discussion on prenatal substance use and eating disorders which have implications for the mother and child. Part 2 of this chapter examines motherhood, particularly the mother-child relationship and the intergenerational implications of child abuse. We discuss attachment, from its early prenatal development to postpartum bonding, and its importance for the infant in forming internal models of caregiving that, if impaired, can contribute to later mental health problems. The important role of breastfeeding in maternal bonding and the difficulties some survivors may encounter are also considered. Next, we examine the influence of previous child abuse on parenting practices and consider intergenerational abuse, that is, the potential of a mother with their own history of abuse to harm their child. Drawing on social learning theory and the parenting literature, it is clear that a parent’s childhood experiences, which may include abuse and harsh parenting, are influential in their parenting practices. This part of the chapter concludes by considering child abuse survivors’ risk of revictimization and the implications this risk poses for pregnant women and their unborn children. Indeed, pregnancy may increase the risk of IPV, and this violence can impact the mother and developing fetus through direct harm and epigenetic effects. The final part of this chapter examines the challenges of childbirth for survivors of childhood abuse and the importance of sensitive care. While childbirth can be particularly traumatizing for some survivors, empirical data suggest that positive birth experiences provide opportunities for caregivers to attenuate negative effects.
... The quality of interactions between the mother and her infant is crucial for the child's socioemotional and cognitive development, development of attachment, and outcomes throughout their lifespan (Lotzin et al., 2015;Raby et al., 2015;Skovgaard et al., 2008). The mother's degree of emotional attunement and sensitive responsiveness to her child have been conceptualized as core components of her contribution to the interaction quality, while how the child's contact initiatives and responses to their parent's contact affect the parent is the child's contribution (Biringen et al., 2014;Lotzin et al., 2015). ...
Ciljevi ovog rada su sistematično prikazati (1) prevalenciju djece koja odrastaju u obiteljima u kojima je roditelj razvio poremećaj uzrokovan uporabom alkohola, (2) moguće razvojne ishode te djece te (3) čimbenike koji djecu koja odrastaju u takvom okruženju mogu zaštititi od negativnih razvojnih ishoda. Istraživanja pokazuju kako je prevalencija djece koja odrastaju s roditeljem s poremećajem uzrokovanim uporabom alkohola, visoka. Posljedice su vidljive u gotovo svim sferama života djeteta: od problema s mentalnim zdravljem i akademskim neuspjehom do upuštanja u različita rizična ponašanja te razvoja problema u ponašanju. Također je u radu prikazan pregled istraživanja koja su se bavila identifikacijom čimbenika koji mogu smanjiti razvoj negativnih ishoda kod djece, a rezultati pokazuju da ti čimbenici postoje na individualnoj razini, kao i u različitim okruženjima u kojima dijete odrasta (obitelj, škola, šire okruženje). U radu se razmatraju i izazovi u istraživanjima ovog fenomena kao i mogućnosti prevencije.
BACKGROUND
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder in childhood. There is growing evidence that both preterm birth and maternal education levels substantially affect the likelihood of ADHD in children. However, there are limited systematic reviews and meta-analyses examining these associations.
AIM
To systematically review and conduct a meta-analysis on the association of preterm birth and maternal education level on the risk of ADHD in children.
METHODS
We conducted a comprehensive literature search across MEDLINE (PubMed), Web of Science, Embase, and the Cochrane Library, including studies published up to June 17, 2024. Data synthesis was performed using random-effect models, and the quality of studies was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale.
RESULTS
This study included twelve studies, which revealed a significant association between premature delivery and an increased risk of ADHD in children [odds ratio (OR) = 2.76, 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.52-3.04, P < 0.001, I² = 1.9%). Conversely, higher maternal education levels were significantly associated with a reduced risk of ADHD in children (OR = 0.59, 95%CI: 0.48-0.73, P < 0.001, I² = 47.1%). Subgroup analysis further indicated that maternal education levels significantly influenced ADHD risk, particularly in studies conducted in China (OR = 0.59, 95%CI: 0.46-0.75, P < 0.001, I² = 81.2%), while no significant association was observed in studies from other regions (OR = 1.25, 95%CI: 0.66-2.40, P = 0.495, I² = 92.3%). The sensitivity analysis confirmed the robustness of our findings, showing no significant publication bias.
CONCLUSION
This study found that preterm birth significantly increases the risk of ADHD in children, while a higher maternal education level serves as a protective factor against ADHD. To reduce the incidence of ADHD in children, public health policies should focus on early intervention for preterm infants and improving maternal education levels.
Objective
We examined the unique associations of different childhood stressors (economic hardship, unpredictability, low parental sensitivity, and adverse childhood experiences) with parents' emotion regulation and mentalizing, and whether parental difficulties in these domains translate into emotion regulation difficulties in their children.
Background
Maladjustment caused by early exposure to adversity may transfer to future generations by undermining the parenting quality of the exposed individuals.
Method
A sample of 562 parents to 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children completed an online questionnaire.
Results
Childhood experiences of early‐life unpredictability and insensitive parental care were uniquely associated with parental emotion regulation and mentalizing difficulties. Examining the mediated paths linking parents' exposure to specific childhood stressors with their children's emotion regulation difficulties indicated that parental experiences of early‐life unpredictability and insensitive parental care are indirectly associated with greater emotion regulation difficulties in their children, through greater parental emotion regulation difficulties and prementalizing modes.
Conclusions
This study points to the unique role of specific childhood stressors—namely, unpredictability and insensitive parenting—in the intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation problems.
Implications
The findings have important implications for intervention programs aimed at working with young children and their parents to mitigate the intergenerational transmission of adversity to the next generations.
Caregiving plays a critical role in children’s cognitive, emotional, and psychological well-being. In the current longitudinal study, we investigated the enduring effects of early maternal behavior on processes of interbrain synchrony in adolescence. Mother-infant naturalistic interactions were filmed when infants were 3–4 months old and interactions were coded for maternal sensitivity and intrusiveness with the Coding Interactive Behavior Manual. In early adolescence (Mean = 12.30, SD = 1.25), mother-adolescent interbrain synchrony was measured using hyperscanning EEG during a naturalistic interaction of positive valence. Guided by previous hyperscanning studies, we focused on interbrain connections within the right frontotemporal interbrain network. Results indicate that maternal sensitivity in early infancy was longitudinally associated with neural synchrony in the right interbrain frontotemporal network. Post-hoc comparisons highlighted enhancement of mother-adolescent frontal-frontal connectivity, a connection that has been implicated in parent-child social communication. In contrast, maternal intrusiveness in infancy was linked with attenuation of interbrain synchrony in the right interbrain frontotemporal network. Sensitivity and intrusiveness are key maternal social orientations that have shown to be individually stable in the mother-child relationship from infancy to adulthood and foreshadow children’s positive and negative social-emotional outcomes, respectively. Our findings are the first to demonstrate that these two maternal orientations play a role in enhancing or attenuating the child’s interbrain frontotemporal network, which sustains social communication and affiliation. Results suggest that the reported long-term impact of maternal sensitivity and intrusiveness may relate, in part, to its effects on tuning the child’s brain to sociality.
We examined the extent to which dynamic coupling of (a) maternal sensitivity and (b) children’s responsive and assertive behaviors toward mothers during a semistructured play session predicts children’s responsive and assertive behavior toward an unfamiliar peer at 39 months and a close friend at 58 and 66 months. Maternal and child behaviors were rated in 30-s epochs during play when children were 32 months old (Time 1; N = 128; 66 girls). Children were rated on their responsiveness and assertiveness toward an unfamiliar peer in the early preschool years (Time 2) and toward a friend in the late preschool years (Time 3). Residual dynamic structural equation models showed that stronger positive contemporaneous coupling of maternal sensitivity and children’s responsiveness in a given 30-s epoch of the play session predicted greater observed responsiveness toward a friend in the late preschool years, after controlling for mean levels of maternal sensitivity and child responsiveness. On the other hand, positive contemporaneous coupling of maternal sensitivity and child assertiveness predicted children’s higher levels of observed assertiveness toward an unfamiliar peer in the early preschool years, after controlling for mean levels of maternal sensitivity and child assertiveness. Results suggest that the dynamic coupling of specific positive behaviors during mother–child interaction may provide children with social scripts to draw on in diverse peer contexts.
Boundary dissolution has broadly been defined as the breakdown of boundaries and loss of psychological distinctiveness in the parent–child subsystem. Qualitative reviews have highlighted the developmental and clinical value of examining boundary dissolution as a multidimensional construct. Though prior work suggests patterns share minimal variance, research has yet to quantitatively synthesize the weighted effect of distinct patterns. The primary aim of this meta-analysis was to aggregate empirical research on associations between boundary dissolution patterns and children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Four patterns of boundary dissolution were identified across developmental, clinical, and family systems literatures: (a) enmeshment—entanglement and blurring of the intergenerational parent–child boundary through psychologically controlling and intrusive behaviors, (b) disorganization—chaotic parent–child boundary (e.g., inexplicable, contradictory behaviors, and responses) reflecting no coherent pattern of relating, (c) caregiving—child functions as a caregiver providing parents with instrumental and emotional support and guidance, and (d) coerciveness—child operates as a disciplinarian or authoritarian to intimidate and control parents. The meta-analysis reviewed 478 studies. Although each boundary dissolution pattern was associated with internalizing and externalizing symptoms, weighted effects across patterns significantly varied in magnitude. Regarding externalizing symptoms, the weighted effect of enmeshment was stronger relative to the weighted effect of caregiving. Turning to internalizing symptoms, the weighted effect of enmeshment was stronger than the weighted effect of caregiving and coerciveness. Additionally, the weighted effect of disorganization was stronger than the weighted effect of caregiving. The robustness of weighted effects depended on child, contextual, and methodological characteristics as well as time lag.
Children who experience homelessness are vulnerable to mental health problems, developmental delays and lower academic achievement. Research suggests that parental health literacy, sensitive parenting behaviour and child self‐regulation are modifiable mechanisms that might enhance children's resilience to adversities associated with homelessness, yet empirical evidence on implementing such interventions in shelter settings is limited. Through a coordinated academic‐community partnership, this study aimed to examine the (1) feasibility of conducting an integrated health approach in shelter settings and (2) the effectiveness of separate interventions on child and parent outcomes. Results are discussed in terms of best practices in shelter settings and building resilience in families experiencing homelessness with young children.
Meta-analytic evidence indicates that the quality of the attachment relationship that infants establish with the primary caregiver has enduring significance for socioemotional and cognitive outcomes. However, the mechanisms by which early attachment experiences contribute to subsequent development remain underspecified. According to attachment theory, early attachment experiences become embodied in the form of cognitive-affective representations, referred to as internal working models (IWMs), which guide future behavior. Yet, little is known about the cognitive architecture of IWMs in infancy. In this article, we discuss significant advances made in the field of infant cognitive development and propose that leveraging insights from this research has the potential to fundamentally shape our understanding of the cognitive architecture of attachment representations in infancy. We also propose that the integration of attachment research into cognitive research can shed light on the role of early experiences, individual differences, and stability and change in infant cognition, as well as open new routes of investigation in cognitive studies, which will further our understanding about human knowledge. We provide recommendations for future research throughout the article and conclude by using our collaborative research as an example.
Previous research has shown robust associations between adverse childhood and adolescent experiences, the development of psychopathy and deviance. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) can be defined as stressful and potentially traumatic events that occur during the first 18 years of life. These experiences encompass different forms of abuse, neglect, and severe household dysfunction. The current study was conducted to explore the influence of psychopathic personality traits on deviant behaviour, while considering adverse childhood experiences among 413 South African youth between the ages of 18 and 20 years old.
This chapter explores how we can better manage the attention sensitivities encoded within us by our earliest experiences. It provides guidance on how to identify how your attention sensitivities affect who you consult with and listen to, the options you tend to prefer, the standards you judge people by and your sensitivity to risk and reward. And it shows how you can then manage the impact of these sensitivities through better balancing them.
We outline the characteristics and behaviors of substance-using parents and related infant mental health outcomes. Specifically, we discuss the teratogenic effects of prenatal exposure and bidirectional effects of parental postnatal substance use on infant mental health, focusing on the impact of comorbid stress on parenting as well as father/nonpregnant partner substance use. Finally, we detail early intervention efforts and future directions related to the study of parental substance use.
We aimed to systematically categorize evidence on the types of early visual stimulation applied to preterm infants (PTIs) admitted to neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), aiming to improve visual function parameters. This study was conducted according to PRISMA and registered in PROSPERO with CRD42022333753. Last search was conducted on March 15, 2023, in four different databases. Articles written in English, Portuguese, Spanish, or Italian, and available in full text were included. Two independent authors performed study selection, data extraction, and bias risk assessment. If there was any disagreement, a third author was contacted. A total of eight studies were included. From these, 62.5% presented a low risk of bias. 100% used a multisensory intervention, which included visual stimulation. In 50%, visual intervention consisted of black and white stimulation cards placed inside the incubator for three minutes. The outcomes showed positive benefits in visual function parameters and other reported clinical benefits in breastfeeding and neuromuscular development. This review demonstrated there is still scarce literature on the effects of early visual stimulation on purely visual functional outcomes, although the existing findings are promising. Parental involvement has been generating unquestionable benefits for the binomial mother-infant and gaining greater acceptance by health professionals.
Risky families are characterized by conflict and aggression and by relationships that are cold, unsupportive, and neglectful. These family characteristics create vulnerabilities and/or interact with genetically based vulnerabilities in offspring that produce disruptions in psychosocial functioning (specifically emotion processing and social competence), disruptions in stress-responsive biological regulatory systems, including sympathetic-adrenomedullary and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical functioning, and poor health behaviors, especially substance abuse. This integrated biobehavioral profile leads to consequent accumulating risk for mental health disorders, major chronic diseases, and early mortality. We conclude that childhood family environments represent vital links for understanding mental and physical health across the life span.
Psychologists have long debated the role of early experience in social and cognitive development. However, traditional approaches to studying this issue are not well positioned to address this debate. The authors present simulations that indicate that the associations between early experiences and later outcomes should approach different asymptotic values across time, given alternative assumptions about the developmental significance of early experience. To test the predictions of alternative developmental models, the authors examine data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) on maternal sensitivity in the first 3 years of life and its association with social competence and academic skills through age 15. Across multimethod, multi-informant outcome data, results suggest that there may be enduring effects of early caregiving experiences in both of these domains.
Emerging adulthood is proposed as a new conception of development for the period from the late teens through the twenties, with a focus on ages 18–25. A theoretical background is presented. Then evidence is provided to support the idea that emerging adulthood is a distinct period demographically, subjectively, and in terms of identity explorations. How emerging adulthood differs from adolescence and young adulthood is explained. Finally, a cultural context for the idea of emerging adulthood is outlined, and it is specified that emerging adulthood exists only in cultures that allow young people a prolonged period of independent role exploration during the late teens and twenties.
A perspective on continuity in development and adaptation was proposed and examined in light of data from the second year of life. Within this perspective it is assumed that despite discontinuous advances in developmental level and despite dramatic changes in the behavioral repertoire, there is continuity in the quality of individual adaptation. Such quality is assessed by examining the child's functioning with respect to issues salient for the particular developmental period. In this study the link between quality of attachment in infancy (the organization of attachment behavior) and quality of play and problem-solving behavior at age 2 years was examined in 48 infants. Based on completely independent assessments, infants assessed as securely attached at 18 months were predicted and found to be more enthusiastic, persistent, cooperative, and, in general, more effective than insecurely attached infants in the 2-year assessment. All measures were in the predicted direction; in some cases there was virtually no overlap between groups. The differences apparently were not due to development quotient (DQ) or temperament. The earlier infant behavior also predicted mother's behavior in the 2-year assessment. Implications for developmental theory and research are discussed.
Social capital has traditionally been defined in terms of the amount of resources that one derives as a result of a diversity of interpersonal relationships. However, the quality of these relationships across development has not been examined as a contributor to social capital and few studies have examined the significance of various age-salient relationships in predicting adaptive functioning, especially testing for cumulative effects over time. Using data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, developmental models spanning from infancy to adulthood were tested via path modeling, linking quality of various age-salient relationships (e.g. infant-caregiver attachment, peer competence, friendship security, and effectiveness in romantic relationships) to global adaptive functioning at age 28. As hypothesized, quality of age-salient relationships during different developmental periods predicted the quality of subsequent relationships, but also showed links with adaptive functioning in early adulthood. Results also showed that the quality of infant attachment relationships not only was linked with more proximal relationships, but also had direct effects on global functioning, suggesting the potential significance of early relationship quality in adaption and well-being in adulthood.
Chance and Necessity .Three Fixed Ideas.Traditional Models of Change. Development in Context. Progress and the Metaphor of Development. Behavior Serves Many Masters. Newton, Einstein, Piaget, and the Self. Consciousness and Being. Adaptation and the Nature of Social Life. Time, Sudden Change, and Catastrophe. Cure or Care.
Early development may be described in terms of a series of salient issues (regulating arousal, establishing an effective attachment relationship, moving toward autonomous functioning, establishing peer relations). The quality of individuals' functioning with respect to these issues may be assessed reliably. Such qualitative assessments yield strong predictions of later behavior. Children functioning well during the infancy period are more competent as toddlers and preschoolers, and there is a logic and coherence to the continuing pattern of adaptation shown by individuals. In various ways such continuity has been shown to be independent of IQ or temperament variation. Such continuity once again makes clear the importance of early experience and the need to examine public policy in light of this knowledge. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Indexes of interrater reliability and agreement are reviewed, and suggestions are made regarding their use in counseling psychology research. The distinction between agreement and reliability is clarified, and the relationships between these indexes and the level of measurement and type of replication are discussed. Indexes of interrater reliability appropriate for use with ordinal and interval scales are considered. The intraclass correlation as a measure of interrater reliability is discussed in terms of the treatment of between-raters variance and the appropriateness of reliability estimates based on composite or individual ratings. The advisability of optimal weighting schemes for calculating composite ratings is also considered. Measures of interrater agreement for ordinal and interval scales are described, as are measures of interrater agreement for data at the nominal level of measurement. (54 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A fundamental question in the discipline of developmental psychopathology is whether early interpersonal experiences influence maladaptation in enduring or transient ways. We address this issue by applying a structural modeling approach developed by us to examine data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development on maternal sensitivity in the first 3 years of life and its association with symptoms of psychopathology through age 15. Results suggest that there may be enduring effects of early caregiving experiences on symptomatology as rated by teachers, although such effects were not found for maternal report. Additional analyses indicated that enduring associations found via teacher report could not be fully accounted for by continuity in caregiving experiences or by early contextual adversity.
2 strategies were used to investigate the continued impact of early experience and adaptation given subsequent experience and/or developmental change in a poverty sample (N = 190). Groups were defined whose adaptation was similar during the preschool years but consistently different earlier; then these 2 groups were compared in elementary school. In addition, a series of regression analyses was performed in which variance accounted for by near-in or contemporary predictors of adaptation in middle childhood was removed before adding earlier adaptation in subsequent steps. Children showing positive adaptation in the infant/toddler period showed greater rebound in the elementary school years, despite poor functioning in the preschool period. Regression analyses revealed some incremental power of early predictors with intermediate predictors removed. The results were interpreted as supporting Bowlby's thesis that adaptation is always a product of both developmental history and current circumstances. While this research cannot resolve such a complicated issue, it does point to the need for complex formulations to guide research on individual development.
This report describes the state of the art in distinguishing data generated by differential susceptibility from diathesis-stress models. We discuss several limitations of existing practices for probing interaction effects and offer solutions that are designed to better differentiate differential susceptibility from diathesis-stress models and quantify their corresponding implications. In addition, we demonstrate the utility of these methods by revisiting published evidence suggesting that temperamental difficulty serves as a marker of enhanced susceptibility to early maternal caregiving across a range of outcome domains in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. We find that, with the exception of mother reports of psychopathology, there is consistent evidence in the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development that the predictive significance of early sensitivity is moderated by difficult temperament over time. However, differential susceptibility effects emerged primarily for teacher reports of academic skills, social competence, and symptomatology. In contrast, effects more consistent with the diathesis-stress model were obtained for mother reports of social skills and objective tests of academic skills. We conclude by discussing the value of the application of this work to the next wave of Gene × Environment studies focused on early caregiving experiences.
Prior studies report a variety of demographic, school, individual, and family characteristics that are related to high school drop out. This study utilizes data from a 19-year prospective longitudinal study of “at-risk” children to explore multiple predictors of high school dropouts across development. The proposed model of dropping out emphasizes the importance of the early home environment and the quality of early caregiving influencing subsequent development. The results of this study demonstrate the association of the early home environment, the quality of early caregiving, socioeconomic status, IQ, behavior problems, academic achievement, peer relations, and parent involvement with dropping out of high school at age 19. These results are consistent with the view of dropping out as a dynamic developmental process that begins before children enter elementary school. Psychosocial variables prior to school entry predicted dropping out with power equal to later IQ and school achievement test scores. In our efforts to better understand processes influencing dropping out prior to high school graduation, early developmental features warrant further emphasis.
The concept of social competence presents problems for conceptualization and assessment. At times researchers have tried to circumvent these problems by defining competence in terms of specific capacities or skills, with the consequence that the integrative potential of the concept is lost. On the other hand, more molar definitions (e.g., “effectiveness”), while being true to the integrative nature of the construct, provide little guidance for assessment. In this paper a developmental perspective on competence is presented which is congruent with a molar definition of competence while still guiding assessment efforts. In addition to this developmental viewpoint, certain practical guidelines are presented for assessment of competence across ages. These include the use of broadband assessments, which are tied to real-life adaptational problems, call for the coordination of affect, cognition, and behavior, and tax the integrative capacities of the child. Initial validation of the developmental competence construct and this approach to assessment is presented.
We review new findings and new theoretical developments in the field of intelligence. New findings include the following: (a) Heritability of IQ varies significantly by social class. (b) Almost no genetic polymorphisms have been discovered that are consistently associated with variation in IQ in the normal range. (c) Much has been learned about the biological underpinnings of intelligence. (d) "Crystallized" and "fluid" IQ are quite different aspects of intelligence at both the behavioral and biological levels. (e) The importance of the environment for IQ is established by the 12-point to 18-point increase in IQ when children are adopted from working-class to middle-class homes. (f) Even when improvements in IQ produced by the most effective early childhood interventions fail to persist, there can be very marked effects on academic achievement and life outcomes. (g) In most developed countries studied, gains on IQ tests have continued, and they are beginning in the developing world. (h) Sex differences in aspects of intelligence are due partly to identifiable biological factors and partly to socialization factors. (i) The IQ gap between Blacks and Whites has been reduced by 0.33 SD in recent years. We report theorizing concerning (a) the relationship between working memory and intelligence, (b) the apparent contradiction between strong heritability effects on IQ and strong secular effects on IQ, (c) whether a general intelligence factor could arise from initially largely independent cognitive skills, (d) the relation between self-regulation and cognitive skills, and (e) the effects of stress on intelligence.
Evolutionary-biological reasoning suggests that individuals should be differentially susceptible to environmental influences, with some people being not just more vulnerable than others to the negative effects of adversity, as the prevailing diathesis-stress view of psychopathology (and of many environmental influences) maintains, but also disproportionately susceptible to the beneficial effects of supportive and enriching experiences (or just the absence of adversity). Evidence consistent with the proposition that individuals differ in plasticity is reviewed. The authors document multiple instances in which (a) phenotypic temperamental characteristics, (b) endophenotypic attributes, and (c) specific genes function less like "vulnerability factors" and more like "plasticity factors," thereby rendering some individuals more malleable or susceptible than others to both negative and positive environmental influences. Discussion focuses upon limits of the evidence, statistical criteria for distinguishing differential susceptibility from diathesis stress, potential mechanisms of influence, and unknowns in the differential-susceptibility equation.
The Strange Situation procedure was developed by Ainsworth two decades agoas a means of assessing the security of infant-parent attachment. Users of the procedureclaim that it provides a way of determining whether the infant has developed species-appropriate adaptive behavior as a result of rearing in an evolutionary appropriate context, characterized by a sensitively responsive parent. Only when the parent behaves in the sensitive, species-appropriate fashion is the baby said to behave in the adaptive or secure fashion. Furthermore, when infants are observed repeatedly in the Strange Situation,the pattern of behavior is said to be highly similar, and this pattern is said to predict the infants' future behavior in a diverse array of contexts. After an exhaustive review of the literature, it is shown that these popular claims are empirically unsupported in their strong form, and that the interpretations in terms of biological adaptationare misguided. There is little reliable evidence about the specific dimensions of parental behavior that affect Strange Situation behavior, although there does appear to be some relationship between these constructs. Temporal stability in security of attachment ishigh only when there is stability in family and caretaking circumstances. Likewise, patterns of Strange Situation behavior only have substantial predictive validity in similarly stable families. Implications for future research and theorizing — particularly as they relate to the use of evolutionary biology in psychological theory — are discussed.
Continuity and discontinuity in maternal sensitivity from 6 and 24 months to 42 months were examined in a sample of 135 disadvantaged mothers and their firstborn children. Sensitivity at 6 and 24 months accounted for 18% of the variance in 42-month maternal sensitivity for boys, 14% for girls. Discontinuity was examined using residual scores. Less maternal sensitivity than predicted was related to stressful environmental and child characteristics for both boys and girls, while greater sensitivity than predicted was related to mothers' experiences of emotional support, girls' positive individual characteristics, and boys who were seen as unengaged.
Emotion regulation and quality of attachment are closely linked. It has been proposed here that one influence on individual differences in emotion regulation may be a child's attachment history. Individuals characterized by the flexible ability to accept and integrate both positive and negative emotions are generally securely attached; on the other hand, individuals characterized by either limited or heightened negative affect are more likely to be insecurely attached. While acknowledging the role of infant temperament, I have focused on the role of social factors in examining the link between emotion regulation and attachment. The approach to emotion regulation taken here--that emotion regulation is adaptive in helping a child attain her goals--is esentially a functionalist approach (Bretherton et al., 1986; Campos et al., 1983), consistent with earlier views of emotions as important regulators of interpersonal relationships (Charlesworth, 1982; Izard, 1977). It has been proposed that patterns of emotion regulation serve an important function for the infant: the function of maintaining the relationship with the attachment figure. Emotion regulation has been described as serving this function in two ways. First, the function of maintaining the relationship is thought to be served when infant emotion regulation contributes to the infant's more generalized regulation of the attachment system in response to experiences with the caregiver. Infants who have experienced rejection (insecure/avoidant infants) are thought to minimize negative affect in order to avoid the risk of further rejection. Infants whose mothers have been relatively unavailable or inconsistently available (insecure/ambivalent infants) are thought to maximize negative affect in order to increase the likelihood of gaining the attention of a frequently unavailable caregiver. Both these patterns of emotion regulation help ensure that the child will remain close to the parent and thereby be protected. Second, the function of maintaining the attachment relationship is thought to be served when the infant signals to the parent that she will cooperate in helping maintain the parent's own state of mind in relation to attachment. The minimizing of negative affect of the avoidant infant signals that the infant will not seek caregiving that would interfere with the parent's dismissal of attachment. The heightened negative emotionality of the ambivalent infant signals to the parent that the infant needs her and thus helps maintain a state of mind in which attachment is emphasized. The approach to emotion regulation presented here is congruent with much work examining the socialization of emotions (Lewis & Saarni, 1985; Thompson, 1990).
Emerging adulthood is proposed as a new conception of development for the period from the late teens through the twenties, with a focus on ages 18-25. A theoretical background is presented. Then evidence is provided to support the idea that emerging adulthood is a distinct period demographically, subjectively, and in terms of identity explorations. How emerging adulthood differs from adolescence and young adulthood is explained. Finally, a cultural context for the idea of emerging adulthood is outlined, and it is specified that emerging adulthood exists only in cultures that allow young people a prolonged period of independent role exploration during the late teens and twenties.
Risky families are characterized by conflict and aggression and by relationships that are cold, unsupportive, and neglectful. These family characteristics create vulnerabilities and/or interact with genetically based vulnerabilities in offspring that produce disruptions in psychosocial functioning (specifically emotion processing and social competence), disruptions in stress-responsive biological regulatory systems, including sympathetic-adrenomedullary and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical functioning, and poor health behaviors, especially substance abuse. This integrated biobehavioral profile leads to consequent accumulating risk for mental health disorders, major chronic diseases, and early mortality. We conclude that childhood family environments represent vital links for understanding mental and physical health across the life span.
In light of evidence that the effects of attachment security on subsequent development may be contingent on the social context in which the child continues to develop, we examined the effect of attachment security at age 15 months, cumulative contextual risk from 1 to 36 months, and the interaction of attachment and cumulative risk to predict socioemotional and cognitive linguistic functioning at age 3 years, using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care. Results indicated that early attachment predicts both socioemotional development and language skills, but not cognitive functioning as indexed by a measure of school readiness, and that the effect of attachment on socioemotional development and expressive language varied as a function of social-contextual risk. Insecure-avoidant infants proved most vulnerable to contextual risk, not children classified as secure or insecure more generally, although in one instance security did prove protective with respect to the adverse effects of cumulative contextual risk. Findings are discussed in terms of risk and resilience and in light of the probabilistic nature of the relation between early attachment and later development.
In a longitudinal study, internationally adopted children (N = 146) placed before 6 months of age were followed from infancy to age 7. Results showed that girls were better adjusted than boys, except in cognitive development, and that easy temperament was associated with higher levels of social, cognitive, and personality development and fewer behavior problems. Higher quality of child-mother relationships, in terms of attachment security and maternal sensitivity, uniquely predicted better social and cognitive development. The combination of attachment disorganization and difficult temperament predicted less optimal ego-control and lower levels of cognitive development. It is concluded that even in adopted children, who are not biologically related to their adoptive parents, early mother-infant interactions and attachment relationships predict later socioemotional and cognitive development, beyond infant temperament and gender.
Transactional models have informed research design and interpretation in studies relevant to developmental psychopathology. Bidirectional effects between individuals and social contexts have been found in many behavioral and cognitive domains. This review will highlight representative studies where the transactional model has been explicitly or implicitly tested. These studies include experimental, quasiexperimental, and naturalistic designs. Extensions of the transactional model have been made to interventions designed to target different aspects of a bidirectional system in efforts to improve developmental outcomes. Problems remain in the need to theoretically specify structural models and to combine analyses of transactions in the parent-child relationship with transactions in the broader social contexts. Longitudinal studies with sufficient time points to assess reciprocal processes continue to be important. Such longitudinal investigations will permit identifying developmental periods where the child or the context may be most influential or most open to change.
Patterns of continuity and change in competence and resilience over the transition to adulthood were examined in relation to adversity and psychosocial resources, with a focus on adaptive resources that may be particularly important for this transition. Variable-focused and person-focused analyses drew on data from the Project Competence longitudinal study of a school cohort followed over 20 years from childhood through emerging adulthood (EA) into the young adulthood (YA) years with excellent retention (90%). Success in age-salient and emerging developmental tasks from EA to YA was examined in a sample of 173 of the original participants with complete data on adversity, competence, and key resources. Regressions and extreme-group analyses indicated striking continuity in competence and resilience, yet also predictable change. Success in developmental tasks in EA and YA was related to core resources originating in childhood (IQ, parenting quality, socioeconomic status) and also to a set of EA adaptive resources that included planfulness/future motivation, autonomy, adult support, and coping skills. EA adaptive resources had unique predictive significance for successful transitions to adulthood, both overall and for the small group of individuals whose pattern of adaptation changed dramatically from maladaptive to resilient over the transition. Results are discussed in relation to the possibility that the transition to adulthood is a window of opportunity for changing the life course.
In a longitudinal study, internationally adopted children (N = 146) placed before 6 months of age were followed from infancy to age 7. Results showed that girls were better adjusted than boys, except in cognitive development, and that easy temperament was associated with higher levels of social, cognitive, and personality development and fewer behavior problems. Higher quality of child-mother relationships, in terms of attachment security and maternal sensitivity, uniquely predicted better social and cognitive development. The combination of attachment disorganization and difficult temperament predicted less optimal ego-control and lower levels of cognitive development. It is concluded that even in adopted children, who are not biologically related to their adoptive parents, early mother-infant interactions and attachment relationships predict later socioemotional and cognitive development, beyond infant temperament and gender.
About 20% of children in the United States have been reported to live in rural communities, with child poverty rates higher and geographic isolation from resources greater than in urban communities. There have been surprisingly few studies of children living in rural communities, especially poor rural communities. The Family Life Project helped fill this gap by using an epidemiological design to recruit and study a representative sample of every baby born to a mother who resided in one of six poor rural counties over a 1-year period, oversampling for poverty and African American. 1,292 children were followed from birth to 36 months of age. This monograph described these children and used a cumulative risk model to examine the relation between social risk and children's executive functioning, language development, and behavioral competence at 36 months. Using both the Family Process Model of development and the Family Investment Model of development, observed parenting was examined over time in relation to child functioning at 36 months. Different aspects of observed parenting were examined as mediators/moderators of risk in predicting child outcomes. Results suggested that cumulative risk was important in predicting all three major domains of child outcomes and that positive and negative parenting and maternal language complexity were mediators of these relations. Maternal positive parenting was found to be a buffer for the most risky families in predicting behavioral competence. In a final model using both family process and investment measures, there was evidence of mediation but with little evidence of the specificity of parenting for particular outcomes. Discussion focused on the importance of cumulative risk and parenting in understanding child competence in rural poverty and the implications for possible intervention strategies that might be effective in maximizing the early development of these children.
Developmental scientists tend to address questions about mechanism in ways that, ironically, are not especially developmental. More specifically, although we now have a great deal of data that suggest that childhood experiences have implications for human development, we know little about the time course of such effects or the dynamic mechanisms that might sustain them. Why? Because longitudinal data are rarely analyzed in a manner that can probe the developmental mechanisms by which earlier experiences are carried forward over time. In this article, we explore this paradox in detail, propose a solution, and review a set of published examples that implement the solution with a focus on the predictive significance of early maternal sensitivity. We conclude with suggestions for work in this area.
Ethological attachment theory is a landmark of 20th century social and behavioral sciences theory and research. This new paradigm for understanding primary relationships across the lifespan evolved from John Bowlby's critique of psychoanalytic drive theory and his own clinical observations, supplemented by his knowledge of fields as diverse as primate ethology, control systems theory, and cognitive psychology. By the time he had written the first volume of his classic Attachment and Loss trilogy, Mary D. Salter Ainsworth's naturalistic observations in Uganda and Baltimore, and her theoretical and descriptive insights about maternal care and the secure base phenomenon had become integral to attachment theory. Patterns of Attachment reports the methods and key results of Ainsworth's landmark Baltimore Longitudinal Study. Following upon her naturalistic home observations in Uganda, the Baltimore project yielded a wealth of enduring, benchmark results on the nature of the child's tie to its primary caregiver and the importance of early experience. It also addressed a wide range of conceptual and methodological issues common to many developmental and longitudinal projects, especially issues of age appropriate assessment, quantifying behavior, and comprehending individual differences. In addition, Ainsworth and her students broke new ground, clarifying and defining new concepts, demonstrating the value of the ethological methods and insights about behavior. Today, as we enter the fourth generation of attachment study, we have a rich and growing catalogue of behavioral and narrative approaches to measuring attachment from infancy to adulthood. Each of them has roots in the Strange Situation and the secure base concept presented in Patterns of Attachment. It inclusion in the Psychology Press Classic Editions series reflects Patterns of Attachment's continuing significance and insures its availability to new generations of students, researchers, and clinicians.
This paper deals with four major issues in developmental psychology: the preservation of structures over time, the mechanisms of change in development, the psychological growth functions for emergent competences, and the determinants of individual variation in psychological development. We emphasize the role of the maturation of the central nervous system on the emergence of cognitive competences during early development and question the traditional doctrine on the preservation of the products of early experience.
This article is concerned with measures of fit of a model. Two types of error involved in fitting a model are considered. The first is error of approximation which involves the fit of the model, with optimally chosen but unknown parameter values, to the population covariance matrix. The second is overall error which involves the fit of the model, with parameter values estimated from the sample, to the population covariance matrix. Measures of the two types of error are proposed and point and interval estimates of the measures are suggested. These measures take the number of parameters in the model into account in order to avoid penalizing parsimonious models. Practical difficulties associated with the usual tests of exact fit or a model are discussed and a test of “close fit” of a model is suggested.
The WJ-R provides a wide age range and comprehensive set of cognitive measures. A major interpretation feature of the battery is the provision of eight factor scores, each based on two measures. The theoretical basis for the tests is founded in Gf-Gc theory, work that is often associated with Raymond Cattell and John Horn, although other scholars think and write about intelligence in a similar vein. This report is a brief review of the theory followed by the results of several factor analytic studies. Nine data sets drawn from the 1977 and 1989 norming and concurrent validity studies have been analyzed. In the concurrent studies, the WJ-R cognitive tests were administered in conjunction with other major batteries including the K-ABC, the SB-IV, the WISC-R, and the WAIS-R. Altogether, 15 sets of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses that included a total of 68 variables were completed. The results of all studies provide support for the WJ-R eight-factor model of Gf-Gc theory. As a byproduct of the procedure, comparative information was observed for the congruence of other cognitive batteries to the Gf-Gc theory. It is suggested that the other cognitive batteries often have been underfactored, which has led to misinterpretation of their factorial structures. This report demonstrates the need for factor analytic studies in which the set of variables is not constrained to the limited set of subtests that have been published together as a battery. It is indicated that the set of variables to be included in a factor study must include enough breadth and depth of markers to ensure that the presence of all major factor effects can be identified.
Duncan's Socioeconomic Index (SEI), a widely used indicator of occupational ranking, is based on education and income data from the 1950 census. The major purpose of this paper is to offer a more contemporary version of this index. There are several reasons for doing so. Not only has the occupational classificatory scheme been altered, but the educational and economic characteristics of the American labor force and of specific occupational groups have changed since 1950. The two decades may also have seen a shift in the relations between the educational and economic attributes of an occupational grouping and its social standing or prestige. Second, the construction of the original SEI rested on the characteristics of the male labor force, rather than those of the total labor force. Third, in the process of updating the index, we illustrate how certain arbitrary decisions (dictated by data limitations) in the construction of the Duncan SEI served to vest the socioeconomic index with some artifactual properties. In the production of an updated version of the socioeconomic index, we use three approaches. First, we experiment with differing measures of the income and educational criteria. Second, we reconstruct the dependent variable, occupational standing, to provide a better approximation of the prestige measure used by Duncan (1961). Third, we consider the attributes of both the male and total labor forces in generating contemporary indexes of occupational status. We also compare the performance of the new socioeconomic indexes in models of occupational attainment against the performance of the original Duncan index and subsequent occupational prestige measures. The paper appends new socioeconomic indexes for detailed occupational titles based on the 1970 census classification of occupations.
Comprehensive, authoritative, and timely, this volume comprises unique and valuable firsthand accounts of the most important longitudinal studies of attachment. Top experts in the field present a range of research programs that have broadened our understanding of early close relationships and their role in individual adaptation throughout life. Synthesizing three decades' worth of groundbreaking findings and analyses, the editors and contributors provide thoughtful perspectives on the state of the science while offering rare reflections on the process of scientific discovery. The book begins by reviewing the foundations of attachment research, tracing the ethological underpinnings of John Bowlby's seminal work and describing the development of internal working models. Subsequent chapters on each study give particular attention to the complexities of tracking developmental outcomes over time and the challenges of translating theoretical constructs into age-appropriate assessments. Authors describe how their projects originated, the shape they eventually took, and how their perspectives changed as the work went forward. Taken together, the findings presented here yield vital insights into the long-term effects of mother-infant relationships, nonmaternal care, and other early experiences. Issues addressed include stability and change of attachment representations through the lifespan, connections between attachment security and temperament, and implications for adult partnerships. The concluding chapter highlights the contributions these studies have made to refining and expanding Bowlby's original models and identifies exciting directions for future research. This thought-provoking book will be read with great interest by anyone interested in attachment, including researchers and students in developmental and clinical psychology, human development, and family studies, as well as clinicians working with children and families. It will serve as a highly engaging and informative text in graduate-level courses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Despite decades of research on social development, the question of whether early interpersonal experiences play an important role in human development is just as controversial today as it was decades ago. In this chapter, we argue that there are at least three reasons why this debate has remained unsettled. First, outside of a few landmark longitudinal studies, relatively few investigations have prospectively charted the long-term correlates of experiences with primary caregivers in the first 3 years of life. Second, most analyses of datasets focused on the legacy of early experience have emphasized two-wave test-retest analyses. We contend that, to distinguish between enduring versus merely transient effects of early experience, it is instead necessary to study the pattern of associations that are observed across multiple assessment occasions. Third, despite decades of stinging critiques by behavior-genetic scholars, not enough attention has been paid in social developmental research to determining whether the robust correlations identified between parental behavior and child outcomes are genetically mediated. In this chapter, we discuss each of these issues, in turn, and review recent conceptual models and empirical data that help to address them.
A critique of research examining whether early experiences with primary caregivers are reflected in adaptation is that relevant longitudinal studies have generally not employed genetically informed research designs capable of unconfounding shared genes and environments. Using the twin subsample (N = 485 pairs) of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, the current study provides evidence that early parental support (derived from observations at 24 months and around age 4, in prekindergarten) is associated with academic skills (r = .32), social competence (r = .15), and externalizing behavior (r = -.11) in kindergarten. Crucially, the shared environment accounted for virtually all of the correlation between parenting and academic skills, roughly half of the association between parenting and social competence, and approximately one fourth of the correlation between parenting and externalizing behavior.
We draw upon data from a prospective, longitudinal study to evaluate the role of typically occurring variations in early experience on development from birth to adulthood. Such an evaluation is complex for both methodological and conceptual reasons. Methodological issues include the need to control for both later experience and potentially confounding third variables, such as IQ or temperament. Conceptual complexity derives from the fact that the effects of early experience can be both direct and indirect, can interact with other factors, and because whether an effect is found depends on what early experience and what outcomes are assessed. Even direct effects are probabilistic and are more in evidence with cumulative than with single measures. Often early experience has its effect indirectly by initiating a chain of events, by altering the organism in some way, and/or by promoting the impact of later experience. We provide examples where early experience is moderated and mediated by other factors and where it shows latent effects following developmental change. We illustrate developmental processes through which early experience has its effect and conclude that despite the complexity of development variations in early experience retain a vital place in the study of development.
2 strategies were used to investigate the continued impact of early experience and adaptation given subsequent experience and/or developmental change in a poverty sample (N = 190). Groups were defined whose adaptation was similar during the preschool years but consistently different earlier; then these 2 groups were compared in elementary school. In addition, a series of regression analyses was performed in which variance accounted for by near-in or contemporary predictors of adaptation in middle childhood was removed before adding earlier adaptation in subsequent steps. Children showing positive adaptation in the infant/toddler period showed greater rebound in the elementary school years, despite poor functioning in the preschool period. Regression analyses revealed some incremental power of early predictors with intermediate predictors removed. The results were interpreted as supporting Bowlby's thesis that adaptation is always a product of both developmental history and current circumstances. While this research cannot resolve such a complicated issue, it does point to the need for complex formulations to guide research on individual development.
It has been three decades since John Bowlby first presented an over-arching model of early human development in his groundbreaking volume, Attachment. In the present paper I refer back to Bowlby's original charting of the attachment landscape in order to suggest that current research and clinical models need to return to the integration of the psychological and biological underpinnings of the theory. Towards that end, recent contributions from neuroscience are offered to support Bowlby's assertions that attachment is instinctive behavior with a biological function, that emotional processes lie at the foundation of a model of instinctive behavior, and that a biological control system in the brain regulates affectively driven instinctive behavior. This control system can now be identified as the orbitofrontal system and its cortical and subcortical connections. This 'senior executive of the emotional brain' acts as a regulatory system, and is expanded in the right hemisphere, which is dominant in human infancy and centrally involved in inhibitory control. Attachment theory is essentially a regulatory theory, and attachment can be defined as the interactive regulation of biological synchronicity between organisms. This model suggests that future directions of attachment research should focus upon the early-forming psychoneurobiological mechanisms that mediate both adaptive and maladaptive regulatory processes. Such studies will have direct applications to the creation of more effective preventive and treatment methodologies.