Early exposure to environmental chaos and children's physical and mental health

Abstract

Environmental chaos has been proposed as a central influence impeding children’s health and development, with the potential for particularly pernicious effects during the earliest years when children are most susceptible to environmental insults. This study evaluated a high-risk sample, following 495 low-income children living in poor urban neighborhoods from infancy to age 6. Longitudinal multilevel models tested the main tenets of the ecobiodevelopmental theory, finding that: (1) numerous distinct domains of environmental chaos were associated with children’s physical and mental health outcomes, including housing disorder, neighborhood disorder, and relationship instability, with no significant results for residential instability; (2) different patterns emerged in relation to the timing of exposure to chaos, with more proximal exposure most strongly associated with children’s functioning; and (3) the intensity of chaos also was a robust predictor of child functioning. Contrary to expectations, neither biological vulnerability (proxied through low birth weight status), maternal sensitivity, nor maternal distress moderated the role of chaos. Rather, maternal psychological distress functioned as a pathway through which environmental chaos was associated with children’s functioning.

Poverty, Stress, and Brain Development: New Directions for Prevention and Intervention

“…Key mechanisms that link children’s exposure to poverty-related adversity and brain development include the presence of chronic stressors such as noise, including background noise such as that associated with ongoing and unmonitored television, household chaos, and conflict among family members that alter the physiologic response to stress, leading to potentially teratogenic effects of stress-related hormones on the developing brain and to a range of negative cognitive, emotional, and behavioral sequelae. 12,13 Importantly, poverty-related stressors have been theoretically argued and empirically shown to tune or program the physiologic response to stress in ways that alter neuroendocrine activity and consequently neural activity, thereby influencing the course of brain development and function 14 (Text Box 1). Controlled experiments in rodents and to some extent nonhuman primates demonstrate that exposure to chronic stressors and the resulting corticosterone/cortisol increase from the prenatal period through adulthood is associated with alterations to the volume of the amygdala, atrophy of the hippocampus, and atrophy of pyramidal dendrites, neurons that are integral to prefrontal cortex function and communication between prefrontal cortex and numerous regions throughout the brain, including limbic structures that activate and terminate the stress response.…”

Vínculos familiares e inclusión social. Variables predictoras de la conducta prosocial en la infancia

“…Such experiences are related to dysfunctional stress reactivity processes in young children, while also affecting neural circuitry, physiological regulation, and metabolic, cardiovascular, and immunological systems (Coley, Lynch, & Kull, 2015). These consequences in turn affect short-and long-term health and development (Blair et al, 2011;Meaney, 2010;Carlo et al, 2012).…”

Housing mobility and cognitive development: Change in verbal and nonverbal abilities

“…Moreover, single moves and other short-term family changes fail to impair and may enhance cognitive development over time; movement toward stability likely promotes connections between systems that support learning. The ecobiodevelopmental theory also contextualizes prior research showing inconsistent effects of housing mobility on development (Coley et al, 2015; Hango, 2006). Threshold effects and developmental timing differences mask potentially important developmental processes triggered by inadequate housing.…”

“…Contrary to previous conceptualizations of intelligence as a static individual characteristic, recent evidence shows malleability of cognitive functioning associated with environmental adversities across childhood and into young adulthood (Beckett, Castle, Rutter, & Sonuga-Barke, 2010; Jaffee, 2007). Only one study explicitly examines developmental delays associated with housing mobility among low-income children across the United States (Coley, Doyle, & Kull, 2015); the authors did not find significant relationships between timing of moves among low-income infants and toddlers and delays in cognitive domains measured a year later. However, the short follow-up period and focus on younger children limits the implications of the study for theory.…”

“…An ecobiodevelopmental model of housing illustrated in Figure 1 emphasizes the multilevel and dynamic nature of family instability (Coley, Lynch, & Kull, 2015; Shonkoff & Garner, 2012). Based on the ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000), this model proposes child development occurs within concentric zones of influence that interact over time.…”