Child and Adolescent Social Withdrawal and Subsequent Adult Psychosocial Adjustment: A Meta-analysis

• In Event: Child and Adolescent Social Withdrawal and Subsequent Adult Psychosocial Adjustment, Health, and Intergenerational Transfer of Risk

Abstract

Interpersonal Process (IPM) and Life-course Models propose that social withdrawal in childhood and adolescence forecasts adult psychosocial maladjustment due to interpersonal difficulties. To evaluate evidence for these models, we conducted a quantitative systematic review of prospective longitudinal studies of social withdrawal in childhood and adolescence as a predictor of adult psychosocial adjustment in multiple domains: internalizing difficulties, adult developmental milestones for participation in families (e.g., marriage, procreation) and society (e.g., education, occupation), self-processes, interpersonal relationship quality, intergenerational difficulties, substance use/abuse, and physical health.

Method
We conducted a meta-analysis of 30 prospective longitudinal studies of social withdrawal in childhood and adolescence (4–16 years old) as a predictor of adult psychosocial adjustment (17-30s). The combined sample across studies was 11,072 individuals (48% female, n = 5,281) from North America, Europe, and Australasia born in the 1920s to 1990s. Most studies did not report race/ethnicity.

Results from each study were converted to a Fisher’s z statistic to achieve a uniform effect size statistic for each meta-analysis, and then converted to Pearson’s r for interpretation. Separate random effects model meta-analyses were computed with Comprehensive Meta-Analysis for each form of adult psychosocial adjustment.

Results
Meta-analytic results indicate that childhood and adolescent social withdrawal was a medium-sized predictor of adult psychosocial adjustment in multiple domains: continuity in social withdrawal (Table 1), social anxiety symptoms and diagnoses (Table 1), self-processes, poor interpersonal relationship quality, and intergenerational difficulties (Table 2); as well as a small-size predictor of: other anxiety disorders and depression (Table 1), and delays in adult developmental milestones (Table 2). Additionally, meta-analytic results support childhood and adolescent social withdrawal as a small-size protective factor against adult substance overuse after one problematic study was eliminated. Meta-analytic results did not support childhood and adolescent social withdrawal as a predictor of adult physical health.

Conclusions
The IPM was supported by results indicating that the social anxiety and interpersonal difficulties it frames as central to psychosocial adjustment in young adults with childhood and adolescent histories of social withdrawal were among the most robust (largest) effects across available research. Childhood and adolescent social withdrawal forecasted robust (medium-sized) risk for challenges to adult adaptive functioning in the domains of continued social withdrawal, social anxiety symptoms and diagnoses, interpersonal relationships (with parents, friends, romantic partners, and child offspring), intergenerational transfer of risk, and related self-processes, as well as more modest (small-sized) risk for delays in achieving adult developmental milestones for participation in families (marriage, procreation) and society (education, work, financial wellbeing), other (non-social) anxiety symptoms and diagnoses, and depressive symptoms and diagnoses. Nonetheless, most adults with childhood and adolescent histories of social withdrawal (those without a history of aggression) appear to be at somewhat reduced risk (a small-sized effect) for substance overuse/abuse. Additionally, several recent individual investigations suggest that both contemporary women and men with childhood and adolescent histories of social withdrawal experience similar delays in young adult developmental milestones (e.g., both young women and men experience delays in initiating dating), whereas these patterns were specific to young men in earlier generations.

Authors

• Jessie K Lundin, Northern Arizona University
  Presenting Author

• Heidi Gazelle, Florida State Univeristy