Internalizing Trajectories in Young Boys and Girls: The Whole is Not a Simple Sum of its Parts

Abstract

There is support for a differentiated model of early internalizing emotions and behaviors, yet researchers have not examined the course of multiple components of an internalizing domain across early childhood. In this paper we present growth models for the Internalizing domain of the Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment and its component scales (General Anxiety, Separation Distress, Depression/Withdrawal, and Inhibition to Novelty) in a sample of 510 one- to three-year-old children. For all children, Internalizing domain scores decreased over the study, although girls had significantly higher initial levels and boys had steeper declines. General Anxiety increased over the study period and, when modeled individually, girls evidenced higher initial levels and greater increases. For all children, Separation Distress and Inhibition to Novelty decreased significantly over time, while Depression/Withdrawal remained low without change. Findings from our parallel process model, in which all components were modeled simultaneously, revealed that initial levels of internalizing scales were closely associated while rates of change were less closely related. Sex differences in variability around initial levels and rates of change emerged on some scales. Findings suggest that, for one- to three-year-olds, examining scales of the internalizing domain separately rather than as a unitary construct reveals more meaningful developmental and gender variation.

Patterns of anxiety symptoms in toddlers and preschool-age children: Evidence of early differentiation

“…Of 1491 eligible families, 86% ( n = 1280) participated in Year 1. These participants were similar in sociodemographic characteristics to families living in the New Haven-Meriden Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area of the 1990 Census (Carter, Wagmiller, et al, 2010). …”

“…The current work represents secondary analysis of data collected within a longitudinal study of an age- and sex-stratified random population sample, initially ascertained from birth records provided by the State of Connecticut for children born from July 1995 to September 1997 at Yale New Haven Hospital (for greater detail, see Carter, Wagmiller, et al, 2010). Based on birth record data, children at risk for developmental delays because of prematurity, low birth weight, low APGAR scores, birth complications, or long newborn hospital stay or those with an already-sampled sibling were excluded ( n = 971; 12%).…”

“…Advances in early childhood assessment, albeit still largely dependent on parental reports, now make it feasible to study anxiety symptoms in young children 1 (Carter, Briggs-Gowan, & Davis, 2004; Carter, Godoy, et al, 2010), and evidence of anxiety symptoms is present in children as young as 1 and 2 years of age (Carter, Briggs-Gowan, Jones, & Little, 2003; Egger & Angold, 2006). Supporting the need to be sensitive to development, one study of preschool children (Spence, Rapee, McDonald, & Ingram, 2001) found that 3-year-olds were significantly more anxious than 4- or 5-year-olds.…”

“…Moreover, varied developmental and gender patterns are observed in young child trajectories of internalizing subscales that are masked when symptoms are viewed as an undifferentiated internalizing construct (Carter, Godoy, et al, 2010). However, few studies examine models of differentiation of internalizing symptoms among children below the age of 5, and especially below the age of 3 (Egger & Angold, 2006).…”

The relationships among language ability, emotion regulation and social competence in second-grade students

“…Carter et al (2010) found that girls demonstrated higher levels of general anxiety than boys throughout toddlerhood, and suggested that future research explores whether girls are actually at more risk for internalizing issues as they enter childhood. It is possible that emotion regulation contributes more to girls' internalizing problems than boys.…”