Poster #53 - Growth Rates in Elicited Imitation of Toddlers in Turkish Care Types Study:The Role of Temperament

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Research focusing on institutionalization showed that children raised in institutions in the early years of life are at risk in terms of experiencing problems in cognitive development such as cognitive delays and attention problems (Nelson, Bos, Gunnar, & Sonuga-Barke, 2011). Therefore, in the recent years, family-like care has begun to substitute institutional care in various countries (Ainsworth & Thoburn, 2014). In that respect, governmental agencies in Turkey have formed new care types and former studies did not stress on the influences of the new types of care on toddlers’ cognitive outcomes. The first aim of the present study was to compare elicited imitation performances of toddlers in institutions, foster care, and biological families as well as testing the moderator role of child’s temperament at Time 1 assessment. Second aim of the present study was to compare the growth rate differences in the elicited imitation performances among care types as well as testing the moderator roles of toddlers’ temperamental traits on the growth rate differences based on the care types.

Toddlers were tested at three time points with four month intervals. In the first assessment, 99 Toddlers between the age of 19 and 23 months participated in the study (institutions= 38, foster care= 17, biological family=44). Telephone task was used to test elicited imitation as an immediate recall with three sequential steps (Bauer, Wenner, Dropik, & Wewerka, 2000). Two different scores were coded: a) the correct immediate imitations of the actions and b) the imitations of the actions in the correct binary combinations. Frustration, soothability, and perceptual sensitivity as temperamental domains were measured by IBQ (Gartstein & Rothbart, 2003).

HLM analyses were run to investigate toddlers’ growth rates differences across the care types. When data were centered at time 1, toddlers in the foster care had better elicited imitation scores compared to toddlers raised in institutions (β=.44, p=.02). There were significant two-way interaction effects. The interactions between perceptual sensitivity and biological family group in predicting elicited imitation scores showed significant results (β=-.41, p=.07 for correct actions, & β=-.47, p=.05 for binary combinations). According to slope analyses, toddlers with lower perceptual sensitivity scores had better imitation performances in the biological family group than institution group; however, two groups with higher perceptual sensitivity did not differ in terms of performances. It indicated that high perceptual sensitivity could be a protective factor for toddlers in institutions. In the longitudinal results, the growth rate differences among groups were not significant. Only one three-way interaction between time, soothability, and care type was significant (β=1.10, p=.01) in predicting binary combination scores. According to the slope analysis, although the performances of toddlers in the institutions did not change over time, in the biological family group, the performances of toddlers with low soothability level decreased linearly over time and the performances of toddlers with high soothability level lessened in a quadratic way over time (Figure 1).

Authors

• Hurigul Bayram Gulacti, Middle East Technical University
  Presenting Author

• Sibel Kazak Berument, Middle East Technical University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Zeynep Ertekin, Middle East Technical University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sevinç Akkaya, Middle East Technical University
  Non-Presenting Author