Poster #35 - Environmental Sensitivity to School: Empirical Evidence from a Longitudinal Study

• In Event: Poster Session 06

Abstract

Background: Primary school is an important developmental environment with factors such as teacher-child relationship, classroom climate and peer relationships influencing children’s academic and psychosocial development (Pianta et al., 2012). However, it is less known whether certain individual differences among children influence the extent to which the school environment impacts children’s development. Theories on Environmental Sensitivity propose that some individuals are more affected by their environment (Pluess, 2015; Aron & Aron, 1997, Pluess & Belsky, 2009, Boyce & Ellis, 2005). That is, more sensitive children’s behavioural and socioemotional outcomes may be more tightly knit to the quality of their school environment than the outcomes of less sensitive children. A few studies have shown self-reported sensitivity to moderate the effects of school-based interventions (Nocentini et al., 2018; Pluess & Boniwell, 2015; Kibe et al., 2020) and response to a school transition (Iimura & Kibe, 2020). However, few studies have researched natural variation in the quality of the primary school context and how it may affect highly sensitive children during the first years of school. Thus, we conducted a multi-informant longitudinal study to identify what is important for highly sensitive children in school. Methods: 265 children and their parents and teachers were recruited at the beginning of primary school. This 4-wave longitudinal study followed children in Switzerland across the first two years of primary school with parent and teacher surveys collected every 6 months. Analysis: At first, we plotted environmental and child outcome variables to identify whether the quality of the environment and child wellbeing changed during the study. The data were analysed using multi-level modelling. Children were nested within classrooms and across time. Results: The exploratory analyses showed that both environmental predictor variables and children’s socioemotional and academic outcomes were highly stable throughout the whole period. In addition, parent-reported sensitivity (HSC12; Pluess et al., 2018) did not have any direct associations with school outcomes (e.g., teacher-reported social competence and internalising symptoms). A random intercept and slope model showed that in the first term of primary school, highly sensitive children are marginally more affected by teacher-child conflict, shown as higher symptom severity (a composite score of internalising and externalising symptoms), B=.14, p=.06, Figure 1. The moderation was amplified when controlling for the effect of family involvement, B=.15, p=.04. However, the moderation effect did not emerge in the longitudinal model, suggesting that highly sensitive children are especially sensitive to the circumstances in the early transition stage to school. Discussion: Highly sensitive children showed a small vulnerability effect to teacher-child conflict in predicting symptom severity, which is in line with the findings by Ellis and colleagues (2011). Importantly, this effect was specific to the transitional stage of the beginning of primary school. Iimura and Kibe (2020) also found that high sensitivity was associated with greater attunement to the quality of the transition. Despite our sample being representative of the region where data were collected, the relative wealth and other protective factors may have prevented us from identifying more classroom characteristics that affect highly sensitive children.

Authors

• Jenni Elise Kahkonen, Queen Mary University of London
  Presenting Author

• Francesca Lionetti, G. d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara and Queen Mary University of London

• Michael Pluess, Queen Mary University of London