Environmental risk and young children’s cognitive and behavioral development

Abstract

Using a longitudinal, large-scale sample of British twins, we addressed the prediction of both cognitive abilities and behavioral adjustment from eight domains of environmental risk: minority status, socio-economic status, maternal medical factors, twin medical factors, maternal depression, chaos within the home environment, and parental feelings towards their children and discipline. Participants included 5765 families with twins (49.1% male) born in 1994 and 1995. Aspects of environmental risk were assessed from birth until the children's third birthdays; outcome measures were assessed at their fourth birthdays. Overall prediction of outcome (via multiple regression analysis) was moderate (R = .23 -.48). SES and chaos were the strongest predictors for the cognitive outcomes whereas for total behavior problems the more proximal parenting factors were also dominant. Future analyses will investigate these environmental risk indicators in the context of the genetically sensitive twin design.Correspondence should be sent to Alison Pike, Psychology

Predictors of Parenting: Family-Wide and Child-Specific Factors

“…Internal reliabilities of the resulting scales were reasonable (α = .57 and .56 for mothers and fathers respectively), taking into account the small number of items, and the effect this has on alpha values (Field, 2004). This version of the CHAOS scale has been used extensively, with demonstrated inter-rater reliability (Hart, Petrill, Deater-Deckard, & Thompson, 2007) as well as predictive validity (Pike, Iervolino, Eley, Price, & Plomin, 2006). The correlation between mothers' and fathers' ratings was r = .52; due to this substantial overlap, combined parental ratings were used when both parents' reports were available.…”

Children’s social behaviour, language and literacy in early years

“…Fourthly, the presence of a third factor may explain the association between language / literacy and behaviour. Factors such as poverty, ethnicity or social class have been found to predict differences in language, literacy and behaviour in young children (eg, Pike et al, 2006). The associations between behaviour and language and literacy should be seen through the prism of sample characteristics, definitions and assessment methods for language, literacy and behaviour in young children and the rapid changes in children's social cognition that occur during the early years.…”

“…The educational significance of behavioural, emotional and social difficulties in young children has received considerable attention (Miller-Lewis et al, 2006;Phillips and Lonigan, 2010;Pike et al, 2006). Emergent behaviour difficulties in early years have been found to be predictive of social difficulties and peer rejection in later childhood (Wood, Cowan and Baker, 2002) and academic difficulties (Tomblin, Zhang, Buckwalter and Catts, 2000).…”

“…Fourthly, the presence of a third factor may explain the association between language / literacy and behaviour. Factors such as poverty, ethnicity or social class have been found to predict differences in language, literacy and behaviour in young children (eg, Pike et al, 2006).…”

“…Some studies on behaviour difficulties in young children have shown limitations with regard to the sample representativeness as well as in the use of behaviour classification checklists at a single point in time, which do not capture the developmental changes during preschool and early primary school years (Angold and Egger, 2004). Indeed, few studies have used longitudinal designs with repeated measures on child behaviour between preschool and the end of Key Stage 1 to examine temporal aspects of behaviour (Miller -Lewis et al, 2006;Pike et al, 2006). And fewer studies have included ratings of prosocial behaviour as a counterpoint to negative behaviours (Phillips and Lonigan, 2010).…”