1-153 - Developmental and Peer influences on Children’s Internalizing Problems

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Children with internalizing problems experience significant impairment in their academic, social, familial, and personal functioning such as high levels of family conflict and difficulty attending school. Using different sampling, statistical methods, and measurement approaches, the four papers presented in this symposium highlight the importance of considering social and developmental factors when assessing and targeting risk for internalizing problems during childhood. Paper one identified four victimization classes of change in children’s peer victimization across 3rd and 4th grade: remitting; chronic; emerging and never victimized. Significant class differences were found for internalizing symptoms which speaks to important individual differences in risk and resilience for internalizing problems. Paper two examined the moderating effect of child age on group differences between clinically anxious youth with social anxiety disorder and other anxiety disorders along assertion social skills; peer interactions; and social anxiety symptoms. Findings suggest that social anxiety disorder interferes with child social skills and peer interactions beginning early in development and progressively more as children age. Paper three examined the influence of pubertal development and peer exclusion on internalizing problems in girls using four waves of longitudinal data (grades 3-6) from the NICHD SECCYD. Pubertal timing and social exclusion by peers additively exacerbated early and late pubertal timing effects on girl’s internalizing problems. Paper four examined effects of childhood anxiety treatment on social skills and peer interactions. Results suggest a bidirectional pattern of effects between improvement in child anxiety symptoms and peer influences.

Sub Unit

• Developmental Psychopathology

Chair

• Rona Carter, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Individual Presentations

• Differences in Internalizing among Children with Distinct Peer Victimization Trajectories across 4th and 5th Grade - Presenting Author: Julia Gram Humphrey, Arizona State University; Becky Kochenderfer Ladd, Arizona State University; Armando A. Pina, Arizona State University

• Age Moderates Social Skills, Peer Interactions, and Anxiety Symptoms in Youth with Social versus other Anxiety Disorders - Presenting Author: Luci Motoca, Virginia Commonwealth University; Yasmin Rey, Florida International University; Carla Eugenia Marin, Yale University; Wendy K. Silverman, Yale School of Medicine

• Peer Exclusion and Girls’ internalizing Problems: The Role of Pubertal Development - Presenting Author: Rona Carter, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Amira Halawah, Univ of Michigan

• An Examination of Effects of Childhood Anxiety Treatment on Social Skills and Peer Interactions - Presenting Author: Carla Eugenia Marin, Yale University; Yasmin Rey, Florida International University; Luci Motoca, Virginia Commonwealth University; Jeremy Pettit, Florida International University; Wendy K. Silverman, Yale School of Medicine