Poster #101 - Unpacking the Associations of Family Adversity and Child Internalizing Symptoms in Homeless Families

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Family Context & Processes

Integrative Statement

Internalizing symptoms are common in childhood and persist into adulthood, often taking a toll on wellbeing (Costello et al., 2003; Angold & Costello, 1993). Although internalizing and externalizing problems affect young children, more research centers on externalizing because measuring internalizing symptoms, especially in young disadvantaged children, requires an assessment of their internal experience (Cicchetti and Toth 2014).
Exposure to childhood adversity increases risk for internalizing symptoms, particularly when protective factors are lacking. For instance, young children exposed to higher family adversity had higher levels of internalizing symptoms (Labella et al. 2017). This effect was buffered by the presence of positive parenting.
Expressed emotion (EE) is one aspect of parenting that reflects parents’ emotional tone towards their child and is assessed with the Five-Minute Speech Sample (FMSS; Magaña et al., 1986). More recently, investigators have assessed EE in the form of parental warmth from the FMSS, providing opportunities to assess aspects of positive parenting briefly (Caspi et al., 2004). Indeed, parental warmth from the FMSS predicts more positive and effective observed parenting practices and better child adjustment (Narayan et al., 2012; Kim-Cohen et al., 2004; Labella et al., 2016).
This study tested protective effects of parental warmth on young children’s internalizing symptoms in families experiencing homelessness and contemporaneous family adversity. We hypothesized that warmth would predict lower teacher-reported internalizing behavior and moderate effects of childhood adversity on internalizing symptoms.
Parents of young children (ages 4-6; N=107; 55% male; 65% Black/African American) residing in an urban homeless shelter completed the FMSS, coded by trained raters for warmth. Parents also completed the Lifetime Events Questionnaire (LTE; Masten et al., 1993) for child exposure to family adversity.
Teachers were later contacted during the academic year about child classroom behavior, and completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997) and Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC; Shields & Cicchetti, 1997). Despite the high mobility of families, 86% of teachers were located and 90% of those returned the questionnaires. Internalizing problems were composited by combining the SDQ emotional problems subscale and three similar items from the ERC (alpha = .81).
Effects of family adversity, warmth, and their interaction on child internalizing symptoms were tested by linear regression, controlling for child sex and age, and parent internalizing distres. Only child sex (β= .24, p<.05) significantly predicted internalizing symptoms with males scoring higher. A post-hoc analysis was conducted to determine whether externalizing scores might account for this surprising result, given high covariance of internalizing and externalizing ratings in this age range (Harden et al., 2000). When SDQ externalizing were controlled, sex was no longer significant and externalizing symptoms became the sole predictor of internalizing symptoms (β= .25, p<.05). These results may reflect teacher response bias, co-occurrence of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in early childhood, or the difficulty of assessing internalizing symptoms in a classroom context (Willner et al., 2016; Bulotsky-Shearer et al., 2010).

Authors

• Kayla M. Nelson, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
  Presenting Author

• Angela J. Narayan, University of Denver
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ann S. Masten, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
  Non-Presenting Author