Child Maltreatment Timing, Interpersonal Mechanisms, and Emerging Adult Psychopathology Across Multiple Informants

• In Event: The Effect of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Adolescent and Young Adult Psychopathology

Abstract

Background: Interpersonal processes are critical mechanisms in the pathway between child maltreatment (CM) exposure and prospective psychopathology (Flynn et al., 2014). According to organizational-developmental theory, the exact interpersonal mechanisms relevant in the link between CM and psychopathology depends on when maltreatment occurs and the salient developmental tasks during this time. For instance, maltreatment in infancy impacts secure attachment formation, one of infants’ primary developmental milestones. Thus, we sought to determine the impact of maltreatment timing on interpersonal mechanisms to psychopathology.
Additionally, CM’s impact on social development is known to result in poor mental health outcomes in adolescence (Flynn et al., 2014), but it is less known whether this mechanism extends into young adulthood. Prior research on the development of psychopathology also shows variations by who reports psychopathology (i.e., other-reported versus self-reported psychopathology; De Los Reyes et al., 2022). Thus, we extended prior research by investigating interpersonal mechanisms between CM and young adult psychopathology measured via multiple reporters (i.e., self, caregivers, and friends).

Method: Participants (N = 413) were from a follow-up study of young adults (Mage = 19.67) who participated in a research summer camp program as children. The original study included 659 low-income maltreated (n = 339) and non-maltreated (n = 320) children aged 10 to 12 (50.1% male). The original sample was racially and ethnically diverse (71.6% Black, 11.8% White, 12.6% Latinx). Children in the maltreated group had substantiated investigations of CM according to Child Protective Services (CPS) records. A socio-demographically-comparable sample of children were recruited.
Constructs and measures included CPS-reported maltreatment via the Maltreatment Classification System (MCS, Barnett et al., 1993); child-reported attachment via the Security Scale (W1; Kerns et al., 1996); peer difficulties via peer nomination data (W1; Bukowski et al., 2000), and young adult internalizing/externalizing psychopathology self-reported via the Adult Self-Report (W2; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2003) and friend- and caregiver-reported via the Adult Behavioral Checklist (W2; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2003). We tested a series of nested confirmatory factor models to examine the structure of psychopathology with multiple reporters. Following, we used structural equation modeling to test our mediation hypotheses.

Results: The best fitting measurement model of psychopathology had separate latent factors for each psychopathology and reporter type (Table 1). See Figure 1 for SEM results with non-maltreated as the reference group (note three other SEMs were run with different reference groups). There were several significant indirect effects. Results showed that chronic maltreatment (vs. non-maltreated and early maltreatment) was associated with more internalizing and externalizing (self-report) via less secure attachment. Alternatively, difficulties with peers mediated the association between chronic and recent maltreatment (vs. non-maltreated) and caregiver-reported internalizing.

Discussion: We found evidence for both attachment security and peer problems at T1 as mediators in the association between CM and young adults’ psychopathology. Associations varied by maltreatment timing and reporter of psychopathology. These results have implications for the measurement of maltreatment and psychopathology. It is important to consider reporter effects in measurement, particularly as it applies to the study of CM and the development of psychopathology.

Authors

• Erinn B Duprey, University of Rochester
  Presenting Author

• Andrew Ross, University of Rochester

• Justin Russotti, University of Rochester

• Elizabeth D. Handley, University of Rochester

• Dante Cicchetti, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities