The effect of placement instability on adopted children's inhibitory control abilities and oppositional behavior.

Abstract

This study assessed relations among placement instability, inhibitory control, and caregiver-rated child behavior. The sample included 33 adopted children who had experienced placement instability, 42 adopted children who had experienced 1 stable placement, and 27 children never placed in foster care. Five- and 6-year-old children completed the day-night task, which requires children to inhibit a prepotent response, and a control task that presents similar memory demands but does not require inhibition (C. L. Gerstadt, Y. J. Hong, & A. Diamond, 1994). Adopted children who had experienced placement instability performed worse on the inhibition task than did both other groups of children, when the authors controlled for age, verbal intelligence (as measured with the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence--Revised; D. Wechsler, 1989; or the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test--Third Edition; L. M. Dunn & L. M. Dunn, 1997), and control task performance (p<.01). Children who had experienced placement instability were also rated on the Child Behavior Checklist as more oppositional than other children (p<.01; T. M. Achenbach & L. A. Rescorla, 2000). Inhibitory control did not mediate the association between placement instability and oppositional behavior (p>.05). These results suggest that placement instability may adversely affect the social-emotional development of adopted children.

Deviations from the Expectable Environment in Early Childhood and Emerging Psychopathology

“…Environmental factors are thought to have a major role in the emergence of conduct problems. Children with multiple foster care placements had higher levels of oppositionality than those with stable placements and those never-placed in foster care (Lewis et al, 2007). Although it is likely that behaviorally difficult children are more likely to be moved, it is also likely that the disruptions of stable relationships caused by multiple placements result in increased aggressive or defiant behaviors.…”

Childhood Abuse Is Related to Working Memory Impairment for Positive Emotion in Female University Students

“…These pathways center around 1), reduced cognitive control and self-regulatory abilities and 2), dysfunctional emotion processing. Although limited, on the one hand, previous work in individuals with experience of ES has documented impairments in cognitive control such as inhibition (Carrion, Garrett, Menon, Weems, & Reiss, 2008;De Bellis, Hooper, Spratt, & Woolley, 2009;Jovanovic et al, 2012;Lewis, Dozier, Ackerman, & Sepulveda-Kozakowski, 2007;Mueller et al, 2012), response shifting (Mueller et al, 2010), and working memory (Majer, Nater, Lin, Capuron, & Reeves, 2010).…”

A holistic examination of the impact of child maltreatment on child behavioral outcomes : a longitudinal multilevel analysis.

“…There was no surprise with regard to the number of changes in caregiver or being a permanent caregiver. The results in this study that reported that the more a child experiences a change in caregiver as well as being in a non-permanent setting, the more behavior problems he or she will exhibit speaks to placement stability and is consistent with the literature (Lewis et aL, 2007;Proctor, Skriner, Roesch, & Litrownik, 2010).…”

“…Results indicated that those children who had ,experienced placement instability demonstrated lower inhibition and higher scorE~S related to oppositional behavior (Lewis, Dozier, Ackerman, & Sepulveda-Kozakowski, 2007). Additionally, as discussed above, placement stability as opposed to instability predicted membership to the stable adjustment group for both internalizing (OR = 1.44, P < .05) and externalizing (OR = 1.47, P < .05) behavior problems (Proctor, Skriner, Roesch, & Litrownik, 2010).…”