Sleep across early childhood: implications for internalizing and externalizing problems, socioemotional skills, and cognitive and academic abilities in preschool

BACKGROUND

Sleep is thought to be important for behavioral and cognitive development. However, much of the prior research on sleep's role in behavioral/cognitive development has relied upon self-report measures and cross-sectional designs.

METHODS

The current study examined how early childhood sleep, measured actigraphically, was developmentally associated with child functioning at 54 months. Emphasis was on functioning at preschool, a crucial setting for the emergence of psychopathology. Participants included 119 children assessed longitudinally at 30, 36, 42, and 54 months. We examined correlations between child sleep and adjustment across three domains: behavioral adjustment (i.e., internalizing and externalizing problems), socioemotional skills, and academic/cognitive abilities. We further probed consistent associations with growth curve modeling.

RESULTS

Internalizing problems were associated with sleep variability, and cognitive and academic abilities were associated with sleep timing. Growth curve analysis suggested that children with more variable sleep at 30 months had higher teacher-reported internalizing problems in preschool and that children with later sleep timing at 30 months had poorer cognitive and academic skills at 54 months. However, changes in sleep from 30 to 54 months were not associated with any of the domains of adjustment.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings indicate that objectively measured sleep variability and late sleep timing in toddlerhood are associated with higher levels of internalizing problems and poorer academic/cognitive abilities in preschool.

Individual and Environmental Predictors of Age of First Intercourse and Number of Children by Age 27

Reproductive behavior characteristics may be influenced by both social and individual factors. Recent studies have revealed that personality traits might be related to reproductive characteristics in adulthood. Little is known about potential mediators or moderators of relations between personality and reproductive behavior. The present study examines the relation between personality traits measured in early adolescence and the number of children people have by age 27, with an attempt to identify moderation and mediation effects. We used data from the longitudinal cohort (N = 585) collected as a part of the Child Development Project. Personality was measured with the use of Lanthier's Big Five Personality Questionnaire. Results from regression analyses and structural equation models showed that four of the five personality traits (except extraversion) were related to the number of children individuals had by age 27, and these associations were mediated by the age of first intercourse and participants' familial and educational plans. We also identified moderation effects of IQ and SES both on the associations of personality traits with mediators and the number of children by age 27.

Adolescent social withdrawal, parental psychological control, and parental knowledge across seven years: A developmental cascade model

INTRODUCTION

Social withdrawal can be problematic for adolescents, increasing the risk of poor self-efficacy, self-esteem, and academic achievement, and increased levels of depression and anxiety. This prospective study follows students across adolescence, investigating links between social withdrawal and two types of parenting hypothesized to impact or be reactive to changes in social withdrawal.

METHODS

Adolescent social withdrawal and parenting were assessed across seven years in a U.S. sample, beginning when students were in 6th grade and ending in 12th grade. The sample consisted of 534 adolescents (260 girls and 274 boys, 82% Euro- and 16% African-American). Social withdrawal was assessed in four grades using at least two informants (teachers, mothers, and/or adolescents). Mothers' and fathers' psychological control and monitoring-related knowledge were assessed by adolescents at two time points. A developmental cascade analysis was conducted using structural equation modeling to assess how withdrawal and control-related parenting impact each other transactionally over time. Analyses included a test for gender differences in the model.

RESULTS

The cascade model revealed that, controlling for previous levels of social withdrawal and parenting, earlier social withdrawal positively predicted psychological control and negatively predicted monitoring knowledge, and earlier parental psychological control-but not monitoring knowledge-predicted later social withdrawal. No adolescent gender differences were identified in the associations between social withdrawal and parental knowledge.

CONCLUSIONS

This study offers insight into the mechanisms by which adolescents become more or less withdrawn over time, and suggests psychological control as a point of psychoeducation or intervention for parents.

Conducting Event-Related Potential (ERP) Research with Young Children: A Review of Components, Special Considerations and Recommendations for Research on Cognition and Emotion

There has been an unprecedented increase in the number of research studies employing event-related potential (ERP) techniques to examine dynamic and rapidly-occurring neural processes with children during the preschool and early childhood years. Despite this, there has been little discussion of the methodological and procedural differences that exist for studies of young children versus older children and adults. That is, reviewers, editors, and consumers of this work often expect developmental studies to simply apply adult techniques and procedures to younger samples. Procedurally, this creates unrealistic expectations for research paradigms, data collection, and data reduction and analyses. Scientifically, this leads to inappropriate measures and methods that hinder drawing conclusions and advancing theory. Based on ERP work with preschoolers and young children from 10 laboratories across North America, we present a summary of the most common ERP components under study in the area of emotion and cognition in young children along with 13 realistic expectations for data collection and loss, laboratory procedures and paradigms, data processing, ERP averaging, and typical challenges for conducting this type of work. This work is intended to supplement previous guidelines for work with adults and offer insights to aid researchers, reviewers, and editors in the design and evaluation of developmental research using ERPs. Here we make recommendations for researchers who plan to conduct or who are conducting ERP studies in children between ages 2 and 12, focusing on studies of toddlers and preschoolers. Recommendations are based on both data and our cumulative experience and include guidelines for laboratory setup, equipment and recording settings, task design, and data processing.

Parents Influence the Visual Learning Environment Through Children's Manual Actions

The present research studied children in the second year of life (N = 29, M_age  = 21.14 months, SD = 2.64 months) using experimental manipulations within and between subjects to show that responsive parental influence helps children have more frequent sustained object holds with fewer switches between objects compared to when parents are either not involved or over-involved. Regardless of parental involvement, sustained holds were visually rich, based on the size, centeredness, and dominance of the held object relative to other objects. These findings are important because they suggest not only that the child's body creates visually rich scenes across play contexts but also that a responsive parent can increase the frequency of these visually rich and informative moments.

Night-to-Night Variability in the Bedtime Routine Predicts Sleep in Toddlers

The present study examined relations between nightly bedtime routines and sleep outcome measures in a sample of 185 toddlers aged 30 months. Parents reported on their toddler's sleep duration and the length and activities included in the bedtime routine each night for approximately 2 weeks. Toddlers wore actigraphs to track their sleep during the same time period. Correlation, mean difference, and regression analyses indicated that toddlers experienced different bedtime routines and exhibited differences in parent reported sleep duration between weeknights and weekends. Multi-level models revealed that variability in the bedtime routine on an individual night most consistently affected parent reported sleep duration on that night. Differences in the bedtime routines between weeknights and weekends also affected actigraph recorded sleep duration and sleep efficiency. Results suggest that keeping consistent bedtime routines between weeknights and weekends is important for optimal sleep outcomes.

Intergenerational continuity and stability in early family formation

This study examines intergenerational continuity (mean level similarity) and stability (maintenance of rank ordering of individuals) in age and marital status at the time of becoming a young parent using prospective data from 3 generations of 585 families. G2 participants were recruited at the age of 5 years and followed until the age of 28, by which time 227 had become parents themselves. The findings suggest that despite dramatic intergenerational discontinuities with young adults, on average, now being more likely to be unmarried and older at the time of becoming parents than in previous generations, intergenerational stability in age and marital status at the time of becoming a young parent is still substantial. This intergenerational stability was, for the most part, not moderated by demographic, familial, or behavioral factors, suggesting that a developmental, multigenerational perspective is necessary to understand what has previously been considered a largely demographic issue. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Maternal stress, sleep, and parenting

Associations between stress, sleep, and functioning have been well-established in the general adult population, but not as well-established in the specific subpopulation of interest here-parents. To advance understanding of how maternal sleep is linked with both mothers' experiences of stress and their parenting, this study used actigraphic and mother-report measures of sleep, observed and mother reports of parenting, and measures of multiple stressors of relevance. In a community sample of mothers of toddlers (N = 314; child age M = 2.60, SD = 0.07 years), maternal stress was indexed with a cumulative risk score that combined sociodemographic risks and common parent stressors, including household chaos, role overload, parenting hassles, child misbehavior, negative life events, and lack of social support. We found that mothers who experienced shorter, later, and more variable sleep experienced higher levels of stress as indexed by the cumulative risk index. In addition, those with higher stress required longer to fall asleep and perceived more sleep problems. We also found that actigraphic measures of poor and insufficient maternal sleep were associated with less observed positive parenting, even when controlling for the cumulative risk index and maternal age, employment, and family size. Mothers who required longer to fall asleep also reported more dysfunctional parenting, with the same statistical controls. The findings, coupled with research showing that sleep is amenable to intervention, suggest that parental sleep may ultimately prove to be a useful intervention target for promoting positive parent involvement and responsiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Measuring sleep in young children and their mothers: Identifying actigraphic sleep composites

The present study considered multiple aspects of sleep in a community sample of young children (at ages 30, 36, and 42 months) and their mothers, using both diaries and actigraphy. Through principal components analysis, 17 of 20 commonly used actigraphy variables were reduced to four main components whose variables formed composites of: Activity, night-to-night Variability, Timing, and Duration. Sleep latency and daytime sleep variables remained separate from the composites. The same components were identified at each age, and for both children and mothers. Furthermore, the sleep composites derived from the components showed greater cross-age stability than individual actigraphy variables. Finally, child and mother sleep composites were related concurrently and longitudinally. These findings demonstrate a systematic and efficient way of summarizing child and mother sleep with actigraphy variables.

Diminished Neural Responses to Emotionally Valenced Facial Stimuli: A Potential Biomarker for Unemotional Traits in Early Childhood

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are characterized by deficits in guilt/empathy, shallow affect, and the callous and manipulative use of others. Individuals showing CU traits have increased risk for behavior problems and reduced responses to displays of distress in others. To explore how deficits in emotion-processing are associated with CU traits, the current study examined the association between callous-unemotionality and a neural index of facial emotion processing, using the event-related potential technique in a group of 3-5 year olds. Children viewed a series of static emotional faces, depicting either fear or happiness, while electroencephalography data were collected. The N170 component, thought to index the neural processes associated with face perception, was examined along with CU traits. Findings suggest that the unemotional dimension of CU traits is associated with diminished emotion-processing responses to fearful faces. Reduced neural responses to facial depictions of fear could be a biomarker for unemotional traits in early childhood.

The neural correlates of temperamental inhibitory control in toddlers

The current study examined the association between effortful control and a well-studied neural index of self-regulation, the N2 event-related potential (ERP) component, in toddlers. Participants included 107 toddlers (44 girls) assessed at 30, 36 and 42 months of age. Participants completed a Go/NoGo task while electroencephalography data were recorded. The study focused on the N2 ERP component. Parent-reported effortful control was examined in association with the NoGo N2 ERP component. Findings suggest a positive association between the NoGo N2 component and the inhibitory control subscale of the wider effortful control dimension, suggesting that the N2 component may index processes associated with temperamental effortful control.This article is part of the theme issue 'Diverse perspectives on diversity: multi-disciplinary approaches to taxonomies of individual differences'.

Examining the Associations Between Performance Based and Ratings of Focused Attention in Toddlers: Are We Measuring the Same Constructs?

The study examines the concurrent and longitudinal associations between ratings-based measures (parents, secondary caregivers, observers) and performance-based measures of focused attention in toddlers aged 30- (n = 147), 36- (n =127), and 42-months (n =107). Parents and secondary caregivers rated focused attention behaviors using the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (Rothbart et al., 2001), and observers rated toddlers' focused attention during a series of laboratory tasks using the Leiter-R Examiner Rating Scale (Roid & Miller, 1997). Toddlers' behaviors on three structured tasks (Token Sort, Toy Play, Lock Box) were used to assess their performance based focused attention in a laboratory setting. Correlations show that parent ratings are not related to observer and teacher ratings, or to the performance-based measures at all ages tested. Second, based on confirmatory factor analyses, a single factor explains the common variance between indicators when the parent ratings are not included in the models. The single factor shows measurement invariance between ages 36 and 42 months based on factor structure, relations of indicators to the factor, and factor scale over time. Third, indicators of focused attention at age 30 months do not seem to measure a common, coherent factor. Interpretations of similarities and differences between ratings and performance-based indicators of focused attention and the presence of a focused attention construct are discussed.

Maternal Executive Function and Sleep Interact in the Prediction of Negative Parenting

Objective/Background: Poorer executive function (EF) has been implicated in the etiology of negative parenting (e.g., harsh, reactive, intrusive). EF may be affected by good or poor quality sleep, and thus sleep may be involved in negative parenting. In the current exploratory study, we investigated the additive and interactive effects of maternal EF and sleep indicators in the statistical prediction of negative parenting. Patients/Methods: A sample of 241 mothers of 2.5-year-olds (51% girls) completed questionnaires, wore wrist actigraphs for one week, and completed several EF tasks during a laboratory visit. Results/Conclusions: We found that sleep activity (e.g., nighttime waking and movements) interacted with EF in predicting negative parenting practices, such that poorer EF was linked with more negative parenting only in the context of higher levels of night waking. Sleep duration also interacted with EF, such that EF and parenting were no longer associated when sleep durations were short. The findings have implications for incorporating sleep into our understanding of maternal cognitive self-regulation and harsh parenting during early childhood development.

Dimensions of deprivation and threat, psychopathology, and potential mediators: A multi-year longitudinal analysis

Prior research demonstrates a link between exposure to childhood adversity and psychopathology later in development. However, work on mechanisms linking adversity to psychopathology fails to account for specificity in these pathways across different types of adversity. Here, we test a conceptual model that distinguishes deprivation and threat as distinct forms of childhood adversity with different pathways to psychopathology. Deprivation involves an absence of inputs from the environment, such as cognitive and social stimulation, that influence psychopathology by altering cognitive development, such as verbal abilities. Threat includes experiences involving harm or threat of harm that increase risk for psychopathology through disruptions in social-emotional processing. We test the prediction that deprivation, but not threat, increases risk for psychopathology through altered verbal abilities. Data were drawn from the Child Development Project (N = 585), which followed children for over a decade. We analyze data from assessment points at age 5, 6, 14, and 17 years. Mothers completed interviews at age 5 and 6 on exposure to threat and deprivation experiences. Youth verbal abilities were assessed at age 14. At age 17, mothers reported on child psychopathology. A path analysis model tested longitudinal paths to internalizing and externalizing problems from experiences of deprivation and threat. Consistent with predictions, deprivation was associated with risk for externalizing problems via effects on verbal abilities at age 14. Threat was associated longitudinally with both internalizing and externalizing problems, but these effects were not mediated by verbal abilities. Results suggest that unique developmental mechanisms link different forms of adversity with psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record

A longitudinal, within-person investigation of the association between the P3 ERP component and externalizing behavior problems in young children

BACKGROUND

Externalizing problems, including aggression and conduct problems, are thought to involve impaired attentional capacities. Previous research suggests that the P3 event-related potential (ERP) component is an index of attentional processing, and diminished P3 amplitudes to infrequent stimuli have been shown to be associated with externalizing problems and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, the vast majority of this prior work has been cross-sectional and has not examined young children. The present study is the first investigation of whether within-individual changes in P3 amplitude predict changes in externalizing problems, providing a stronger test of developmental process.

METHOD

Participants included a community sample of children (N = 153) followed longitudinally at 30, 36, and 42 months of age. Children completed an oddball task while ERP data were recorded. Parents rated their children's aggression and ADHD symptoms.

RESULTS

Children's within-individual changes in the P3 amplitude predicted concomitant within-child changes in their aggression such that smaller P3 amplitudes (relative to a child's own mean) were associated with more aggression symptoms. However, changes in P3 amplitudes were not significantly associated with ADHD symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggest that the P3 may play a role in development of aggression, but do not support the notion that the P3 plays a role in development of early ADHD symptoms.

Mapping the Growth of Heterogeneous Forms of Externalizing Problem Behavior Between Early Childhood and Adolescence:A Comparison of Parent and Teacher Ratings

We compared long-term growth patterns in teachers' and mothers' ratings of Overt Aggression, Covert Aggression, Oppositional Defiance, Impulsivity/inattention, and Emotion Dysregulation across developmental periods spanning kindergarten through grade 8 (ages 5 to 13 years). We also determined whether salient background characteristics and measures of child temperament and parenting risk differentially predicted growth in discrete categories of child externalizing symptoms across development. Participants were 549 kindergarten-age children (51% male; 83% European American; 17% African American) whose problem behaviors were rated by teachers and parents each successive year of development through 8th grade. Latent growth curve analyses were performed for each component scale, contrasting with an overall index of externalizing, in a piecewise fashion encompassing two periods of development: K-1and grades 1-8. Our findings showed that there were meaningful differences and similarities between informants in their levels of concern about specific forms of externalizing problems, patterns of change in problem behavior reports across development, and in the extent to which their ratings of specific problems were associated with distal and proximal covariates. Thus, these data provided novel information about issues that have received scant empirical attention and have important implications for understanding the development and prevention of children's long-term externalizing problems.

Dysregulation in children: Origins and implications from age 5 to age 28

Research shows that childhood dysregulation is associated with later psychiatric disorders. It does not yet resolve discrepancies in the operationalization of dysregulation. It is also far from settled on the origins and implications of individual differences in dysregulation. This study tested several operational definitions of dysregulation using Achenbach attention, anxious/depressed, and aggression subscales. Individual growth curves of dysregulation were computed, and predictors of growth differences were considered. The study also compared the predictive utility of the dysregulation indexes to standard externalizing and internalizing indexes. Dysregulation was indexed annually for 24 years in a community sample (n = 585). Hierarchical linear models considered changes in dysregulation in relation to possible influences from parenting, family stress, child temperament, language, and peer relations. In a test of the meaning of dysregulation, it was related to functional and psychiatric outcomes in adulthood. Dysregulation predictions were further compared to those of the more standard internalizing and externalizing indexes. Growth curve analyses showed strong stability of dysregulation. Initial levels of dysregulation were predicted by temperamental resistance to control, and change in dysregulation was predicted by poor language ability and peer relations. Dysregulation and externalizing problems were associated with negative adult outcomes to a similar extent.

Child Sleep and Socioeconomic Context in the Development of Cognitive Abilities in Early Childhood

Despite a robust literature examining the association between sleep problems and cognitive abilities in childhood, little is known about this association in toddlerhood, a period of rapid cognitive development. The present study examined the association between various sleep problems, using actigraphy, and performance on a standardized test of cognitive abilities, longitudinally across three ages (30, 36, and 42 months) in a large sample of toddlers (N = 493). Results revealed a between-subject effect in which the children who had more delayed sleep schedules on average also showed poorer cognitive abilities on average but did not support a within-subjects effect. Results also showed that delayed sleep explains part of the association between family socioeconomic context and child cognitive abilities.

Peer Victimization during Middle Childhood as a Marker of Attenuated Risk for Adult Arrest

This longitudinal investigation examined interactions between aggression and peer victimization during middle childhood in the prediction of arrest through the adult years for 388 (198 boys, 190 girls) study participants. As part of an ongoing multisite study (i.e., Child Development Project), peer victimization and aggression were assessed via a peer nomination inventory in middle childhood, and juvenile and adult arrest histories were assessed via a self-report questionnaire as well as review of court records. Early aggression was linked to later arrest but only for those youths who were rarely victimized by peers. Although past investigators have viewed youths who are both aggressive and victimized as a high-risk subgroup, our findings suggest that the psychological and behavioral attributes of these children may mitigate trajectories toward antisocial problems.

Development of internalizing problems from adolescence to emerging adulthood: Accounting for heterotypic continuity with vertical scaling

Manifestations of internalizing problems, such as specific symptoms of anxiety and depression, can change across development, even if individuals show strong continuity in rank-order levels of internalizing problems. This illustrates the concept of heterotypic continuity, and raises the question of whether common measures might be construct-valid for one age but not another. This study examines mean-level changes in internalizing problems across a long span of development at the same time as accounting for heterotypic continuity by using age-appropriate, changing measures. Internalizing problems from age 14-24 were studied longitudinally in a community sample (N = 585), using Achenbach's Youth Self-Report (YSR) and Young Adult Self-Report (YASR). Heterotypic continuity was evaluated with an item response theory (IRT) approach to vertical scaling, linking different measures over time to be on the same scale, as well as with a Thurstone scaling approach. With vertical scaling, internalizing problems peaked in mid-to-late adolescence and showed a group-level decrease from adolescence to early adulthood, a change that would not have been seen with the approach of using only age-common items. Individuals' trajectories were sometimes different than would have been seen with the common-items approach. Findings support the importance of considering heterotypic continuity when examining development and vertical scaling to account for heterotypic continuity with changing measures. (PsycINFO Database Record

Reduced neural responses to vocal fear: a potential biomarker for callous-uncaring traits in early childhood

OBJECTIVE

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are characterized by a lack of guilt and empathy, and low responsiveness to distress and fear in others. Children with CU traits are at-risk for engaging in early and persistent conduct problems. Individuals showing CU traits have been shown to have reduced neural responses to others' distress (e.g., fear). However, the neural components of distress responses in children with CU traits have not been investigated in early childhood. In the current study, we examined neural responses that underlie the processing of emotionally valenced vocal stimuli using the event-related potential technique in a group of preschoolers.

METHOD

Participants between 2 and 5 years old took part in an auditory oddball task containing English-based pseudowords spoken with either a fearful, happy, or a neutral prosody while electroencephalography data were collected. The mismatch negativity (MMN) component, an index of the automatic detection of deviant stimuli within a series of stimuli, was examined in association with two dimensions of CU traits (i.e., callousness-uncaring and unemotional dimensions) reported by primary caregivers.

RESULTS

Findings suggest that the callousness-uncaring dimension of CU traits in early childhood is associated with reduced responses to fearful vocal stimuli.

CONCLUSIONS

Reduced neural responses to vocal fear could be a biomarker for callous-uncaring traits in early childhood. These findings are relevant for clinicians and researchers attempting to identify risk factors for early callous-uncaring traits.

Dispositional, demographic, and social predictors of trajectories of intimate partner aggression in early adulthood

OBJECTIVE

From a developmental systems perspective, the origins of maladjusted behavior are multifaceted, interdependent, and may differ at different points in development. Personality traits influence developmental outcomes, as do socialization environments, but the influence of personality depends on the socialization environment, and the influence of the socialization environment varies according to personality. The present study takes a developmental systems approach to investigate pathways through which dispositional traits in childhood might act in concert with peer and parental socialization contexts to predict trajectories of intimate partner aggression (IPA) during emerging adulthood.

METHOD

The study included 466 participants (49% male, 81% European American, 15% African American) from a longitudinal study of social development. Measures of demographics, temperament, personality, parent-child relations, romantic relationships, peer relationships, and IPA were administered between 5 and 23 years of age. The study used latent growth curve analysis to predict variations in trajectories of IPA during early adulthood.

RESULTS

Numerous variables predicted risk for the perpetration of IPA, but different factors were associated at the end of adolescence (e.g., psychopathic traits) than with changes across early adulthood (e.g., friend antisociality). Males and individuals with a history of resistance to control temperament showed enhanced susceptibility to social risk factors, such as exposure to antisocial peers and poor parent-adolescent relations.

CONCLUSIONS

Consistent with a developmental systems perspective, multiple factors, including personality traits in early childhood and aspects of the social environment in adolescence, predict trajectories of IPA during early adulthood through additive, mediated, and moderated pathways. Knowledge of these risk factors and for whom they are most influential could help inform efforts to prevent the emergence and persistence of IPA. (PsycINFO Database Record