1-022 - Developmental consequences of prenatal and early childhood exposure to intimate partner violence for children’s functioning

Session Type: Poster Symposium

Integrative Statement

Increasingly, public health attention is focusing on exposure to risk early in life (prenatal and first 3 years) because it is becoming clear that risk exposure during these sensitive periods of brain development, including systems involved in emotional and physiological regulation, can set children on negative developmental pathways. The current symposium includes 5 papers that all focus on early exposure to IPV and its consequences for children, from infancy through middle childhood, using multiple methods including physiological markers and behavioral observations. Mediators and moderators such as maternal factors and child characteristics are examined. The first two papers examine outcomes for infants – physiological reactivity and emotional reactivity and regulation strategies. Maternal parenting moderated the effects on physiological reactivity, while maternal trauma symptoms mediate the effects on emotional regulation. The next three papers are from two different longitudinal studies of IPV and children’s functioning, very unusual for this field. The first finds that child behavior at age 4 is predicted by prenatal exposure to IPV and moderated by maternal parenting. The last two papers examine developmental trajectories of children’s trauma symptoms and internalizing and externalizing behaviors, respectively. Parenting is found to moderate trauma symptoms over time, while child executive functioning mediates children’s behavior problems over time. Together these papers, focusing on early exposure and using longitudinal designs and observational and physiological methods, represent the critical next steps in understanding mechanisms involved in the influence of prenatal and early postnatal exposure to IPV on subsequent child developmental trajectories.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Alytia Levendosky, Michigan State University

Discussant

• Alissa Huth-Bocks, Eastern Michigan University

Individual Presentations

• Maternal Resilience and Caregiving Behavior as Protective Factors for Infants Exposed to Prenatal Intimate Partner Violence - Presenting Author: Michelle Gilchrist, DePaul University; Julie D'Amico, DePaul University; Caleb Figge, DePaul University; Cecilia Martinez-Torteya, DePaul University

• Emotion Regulation Strategy Use in Infants Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence - Presenting Author: Antonia Garcia, Michigan State University; Nicola Bernard, Michigan State University; Jade Kobayashi, Michigan State University; Anne Bogat, Michigan State University; Alytia Levendosky, Michigan State University; Joseph Lonstein, Michigan State University

• The Relationship between Prenatal Maternal Representations and Postnatal Child Behavior in the Context of IPV - Presenting Author: Nicola Bernard, Michigan State University; Antonia Garcia, Michigan State University; Jade Kobayashi, Michigan State University; Alytia Levendosky, Michigan State University; Anne Bogat, Michigan State University

• A prospective investigation into the long-term trajectory of PTSD symptoms in children exposed to early intimate partner violence - Presenting Author: Maria Galano, University of Michigan; Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, University of Michigan; Hannah Clark, University of Michigan; Sara Stein, University of Michigan; Sandra Graham-Bermann, University of Michigan

• Executive functioning among children exposed to intimate partner violence - Presenting Author: Hannah Clark, University of Michigan; Maria Galano, University of Michigan; Sara Stein, University of Michigan; Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, University of Michigan; Sandra Graham-Bermann, University of Michigan