Household Chaos and Infant Intellectual Development: A Prospective Study of Youth from 3 to 24 Months

• In Event: The Environment’s Role in Cognitive Development across Contexts and Developmental Stages

Abstract

Background. Children reared in chaotic households, defined as homes with high levels of disorganization, noise, and a lack of routine, evince poorer cognitive development, including poorer performance on standardized intelligence batteries (Deater‐Deckard et al., 2009), and lower academic achievement (Johnson et al., 2008). While extant research has focused on the role of household chaos in cognitive development of preschool and school-aged youth, less is known about associations between household chaos and cognitive development in infancy. The present study extends previous research demonstrating associations between household chaos and cognitive development to the first two years of life, a developmental period characterized by substantial cognitive growth and considerable time spent in the home environment. Methods. Participants were 1,091 infant twin pairs clustered within 547 families recruited as a part of the Louisville Twin Study. Cognitive development was based on standardized Bayley Test of Mental Development Index (MDI) scores at 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 months. Household chaos was an average of mother and father reports on the Confusion, Hubbub, and Organization Scale (CHAOS) at child ages 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 months. A random-intercept cross-lag panel model (RICLPM) was fit to test the study hypotheses. RICLPMs separate time-invariant between-subject differences (i.e., an individual’s mean) from within-subject variation across time (i.e., an individual’s deviation from their mean; Hamaker et al., 2015). Results. The within-family household chaos autoregressive path was nonsignificant, indicating that a deviation from the family chaos mean was not associated with a deviation from the mean at the subsequent wave. Positive deviations from the within-infant MDI mean predicted positive deviations from the mean at the subsequent wave. Household chaos negatively predicted subsequent MDI scores, indicating that when families that deviated above their mean level of household chaos, the average infant within that family exhibited a lower MDI score at the subsequent assessment. MDI scores negatively predicted subsequent household chaos, indicating that parents reported levels of chaos below the family average following waves where the average infant within that family scored above their average on the MDI. Both within-subject and between-subject correlations between chaos and MDI scores were nonsignificant. Conclusions. Findings from the present study indicate that across infancy, children demonstrated poorer mental abilities following periods of elevated household chaos. Child mental development also predicted subsequent household chaos, indicating a potential reciprocal relationship between child intellectual development and the home environment.

Authors

• Sean Womack, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Presenting Author

• Eric Turkheimer, University of Virginia
  Non-Presenting Author

• Christopher Beam, University of Southern California
  Non-Presenting Author

• Deborah Winders Davis, University of Louisville School of Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author