Positive valence bias and parent–child relationship security moderate the association between early institutional caregiving and internalizing symptoms

Abstract

Institutional caregiving is associated with significant deviations from species-expected caregiving, altering the normative sequence of attachment formation and placing children at risk for long-term emotional difficulties. However, little is known about factors that can promote resilience following early institutional caregiving. In the current study, we investigated how adaptations in affective processing (i.e. positive valence bias) and family-level protective factors (i.e. secure parent-child relationships) moderate risk for internalizing symptoms in Previously Institutionalized (PI) youth. Children and adolescents with and without a history of institutional care performed a laboratory-based affective processing task and self-reported measures of parent-child relationship security. PI youth were more likely than comparison youth to show positive valence biases when interpreting ambiguous facial expressions. Both positive valence bias and parent-child relationship security moderated the association between institutional care and parent-reported internalizing symptoms, such that greater positive valence bias and more secure parent-child relationships predicted fewer symptoms in PI youth. However, when both factors were tested concurrently, parent-child relationship security more strongly moderated the link between PI status and internalizing symptoms. These findings suggest that both individual-level adaptations in affective processing and family-level factors of secure parent-child relationships may ameliorate risk for internalizing psychopathology following early institutional caregiving.

Exploring valence bias as a metric for frontoamygdalar connectivity and depressive symptoms in childhood

“…For instance, early life stress is a risk factor for mental health disorders (Tottenham et al, 2011) and is associated with developmental differences in regulatory circuitry (Heim & Binder, 2012;Lupien, McEwen, Gunnar, & Heim, 2009). The framework proposed here predicts that these developmental differences in brain function may produce a vulnerability to mental health disorders in the face of early life stress (Vantieghem et al, 2017), and is consistent with recent work showing that positive affect may serve as a buffer from the development of depressive symptoms (Sewart et al, 2019). Along these lines, frontoamygdalar differences may be linked to resiliency (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004), the ability to find a positive outlook in potentially negative situations (Gross & John, 2003).…”

“…This scale has been validated in ages as young as 3 years (Ebesutani, Tottenham, & Chorpita, 2015). However, because our age range (6-13 years) extends below the minimum of standardized T scores (grades 3-12), raw scores of the major depression subscale were used in the analyses, consistent with a recent study (Vantieghem et al, 2017). One participant reported a major depression score of 12 which, while the age of this participant (7 years) was below the range included in the T scores, was associated with a T score in the youngest standardized sample (3 rd grade) of 74, exceeding the cut-off associated with clinical diagnoses (T = 70; Chorpita et al, 2000).…”

Friendship and social functioning following early institutional rearing: The role of ADHD symptoms

“…First, we selected anxiety and ADHD symptoms as a priori psychopathology domains of interest due to their increased prevalence in children with a history of institutional rearing. Other forms of psychopathology are relevant to social functioning and are found in elevated rates among children with early institutional care exposure, including autism-like behaviors, disinhibited social behavior, depression, oppositional behavior, and callous-unemotional traits (Goff & Tottenham, 2015; Humphreys, McGoron, et al, 2015; Humphreys, Nelson, Fox, & Zeanah, 2017; Kumsta et al, 2010; Levin, Fox, Zeanah, & Nelson, 2015; Rutter, Colvert, et al, 2007; VanTieghem et al, 2016) also merit study in the context of early caregiving quality. Previous work has linked deprivation-specific patterns from children who were cared for in Romanian orphanages, including cognitive impairment, disinhibited social behavior, “quasi-autism,” as well as inattention/overactivity behaviors with peer difficulties in PI children (Rutter, Colvert, et al, 2007; Rutter, Kreppner, et al, 2007; Sonuga-Barke et al, 2010).…”

Attachment in the context of atypical caregiving

“…Judged against these goals for this Special Issue, we could not be more satisfied with the papers presented in this Special Issue, nor more grateful to the authors who contributed the studies reported herein. As the reader will no doubt recognize at a glance, the work contained in this Special Issue focuses on a notably wide range of contexts (e.g., institutional rearing; VanTieghem et al, 2017), conditions (e.g., poverty; Kobak, Zajac, Abbott, Zisk, & Bounoua, 2017), and caregiving behaviors (e.g., maltreatment; Roisman et al, 2017) likely to generate risk in relation to attachment-related individual differences, processes, and disruptions over development. In so doing, the papers presented here collectively not only (a) make significant contributions to advancing the basic science critical to acquiring a better understanding of the consequences of atypical caregiving for attachment-related outcomes but also (b) serve to further realize the translational promise of attachment theory and research to facilitate healthy development in at-risk populations via diverse attachment-related intervention efforts.…”