Temperament moderates the effects of early deprivation on infant attention

Abstract

Institutional care has been shown to increase the risk of attention problems in children, but some children are more sensitive to their environment, both for better and for worse.With this in mind, the current study examined the moderating role of temperament (falling reactivity) between early adversity and attention skills. Six-to 15-month-old infants residing in institutions (n = 63) and infants reared by their biological families from low socioeconomic environments (n = 59) were recruited. The infants' attention skills were measured by calculating the length of time they spent looking at toys. The infants' temperaments were measured by a subscale of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (falling reactivity/rate of recovery from distress). The findings were in line with the differential susceptibility theory.Compared to infants with high levels of falling reactivity, infants with lower levels of falling reactivity had better attention skills if they were in a family group, but they had lower attention skills if they were residing in institutions.The attention skills of the infants who had higher scores for falling reactivity did not appear to be affected by the adverse environment. K E Y W O R D Sattention skills, differential susceptibility, early deprivation, institutional care, temperament | 455 | INTRODUCTIONChildren residing in institutions may have developmental delays and problems because of being raised in a large group of children lacking individualized and sensitive care (McCall, 2012; The St. Petersburg-USA Orphanage Research Team, 2005). At the same time, even before being placed in institutions, most institutionalized children already experience some risk factors such as poverty, violence, neglect, social deprivation, disasters, and physical and emotional abuse (Miller et al., 2006), and the institutional care experience is added to these risks to further influence their developmental outcomes (Baptista et al., 2014;Tirella et al., 2006).Attention problems, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), appear to be among the developmental outcomes of children with either a history or a current experience of institutional care, and these problems persist even after these children are adopted or fostered into families

Links between Daytime Napping, Night-Time Sleep Quality and Infant Attention: An Eye-Tracking, Actigraphy and Parent-Report Study

“…Although there has been an increased focus on the relation between sleep and attention in early development, to our knowledge there are no published studies have yet used objective measures in parallel with parent reported sleep to explore the link between sleep and concurrent attention control in infants. Additionally, a recent emphasis has been separately placed on the development of both infant sleep and attention in the context of extrinsic and intrinsic factors such as family environment [ 1 , 26 , 27 ]. There is a growing body of research that shows links between poorer sleep and poorer family functioning, as well as poorer attention and poorer family functioning in typically developing children and paediatric patient populations (e.g., [ 28 , 29 ]).…”