Previously-institutionalized toddlers’ social and emotional competence and kindergarten adjustment: Indirect effects through preschool executive function

• In Event: Young Children's Emotion Expression and Understanding

Abstract

When caregiving is not reliable or responsive, as is true in institutional care, there is an increased risk for deficits in socioemotional functioning (Batki, 2018). Poorer socioemotional skills may make it more challenging for previously-institutionalized (PI) children to navigate environmental contexts that facilitate cognitive growth, particularly executive functioning (EF), resulting in subsequent academic maladjustment. In the current study, a longitudinal process model from infancy to kindergarten was tested to identify developmental mechanisms through which early deprivation may have long-lasting impacts on PI children’s outcomes (N = 71; 59% female). Specifically, we hypothesized that poorer socio-emotional competencies measured within 3 months of removal from institutional care (T1; Range: 18-36 months; M = 26.53 months, SD = 5.09 months) would be associated with deficits in specific components of EF (attention, memory, and inhibitory control) in preschool (T2; Range: 2-4 years; M = 3.09 years, SD = 0.44 years), and that poorer EF during the preschool period would be associated with poorer observed classroom competence and less social competence with both peers and teachers in kindergarten (K; Range: 5.5-6.5 years; M = 6.00 years, SD = 0.30 years).
PI children were adopted from multiple regions; Russia/Eastern Europe (35%), China/Southeast Asia (31%), Latin America (9%), and Africa/Haiti (25%), and child race was reported by primary caregivers as American Indian/Alaskan Native (4%), Asian (38%), Black (27%), white (25%), multiracial (3%), and unknown (3%). Data were multi-method and multi-reporter. At T1, primary caregivers (96% mothers) completed the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (BITSEA; Briggs-Gowan et al., 2004) to assess socioemotional competence and children completed two observational novelty tasks adapted from Goldsmith’s Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB; Goldsmith et al., 1999) to assess emotion regulation. At T2, parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL 1.5-5; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000) to assess attention and children completed a laboratory Spin the Pots game (Hughes & Ensor, 2005) and a delay of gratification task to assess working memory and inhibitory control, respectively. At the kindergarten assessment, teachers completed the MacArthur Health and Behavior Questionnaire (HBQ-T, Essex et al., 2002) to assess teacher-child conflict and trained experimenters observed PI children in their kindergarten classrooms and coded their behavior using standardized protocols (PROI-R; Gunnar et al., 2010; OSLC, 1982– 2007, e.g., Kerr et al., 2009) to assess social and classroom competence.
Direct and indirect effects emerged from a path analysis (Mplus, Muthén & Muthén, 2017). Overall, results indicated that parent-reported social and emotional competency at T1 was associated with greater experimenter-observed social competence and classroom competence, as well as less teacher-child conflict in kindergarten; these effects were indirectly associated through parents’ reports of child attentional and inhibitory control at T2.
The current study is one of the first to use unbiased observer ratings of PI children’s behavior and performance in the classroom, and provides a more comprehensive picture regarding the effects of early caregiving adversity by highlighting multiple components of EF as developmental mechanisms linking PI infants’ socioemotional skills after removal from institutional care with later with classroom adjustment.

Authors

• Nicole Perry, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Bonny Donzella, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Shanna B. Mliner, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Emily Reilly, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities