Subtypes of Childhood Social Withdrawal and Adult Relationship and Parenting Outcomes.

The aims of the current 30-year prospective study were to determine: 1) whether socially withdrawn kindergarten children are less likely than others to enter serious romantic relationships or become parents by age 34, 2) whether socially withdrawn children parent differently than non-withdrawn individuals when they grow up, and 3) whether subtypes of withdrawal are associated with different adult outcomes. Following Harrist et al. (1997), 558 kindergarten children (81% White, 17% Black) were categorized into one of five groups: four clusters of social withdrawal (n = 95 unsociable, 23 passive-anxious, 18 active-isolate, 25 sad/depressed) or non-withdrawal (n = 397), using directly observed school behavior and teacher ratings.

Regulation of Stress Physiology While Parenting: a Randomized Micro-trial of Loving-Kindness Meditation on Parenting and Salivary Alpha Amylase.

Sensitive parenting early in life sets children up for healthy development, and this type of parenting draws on the parent's compassion and physiological regulation. Loving-kindness meditations (LKM) increase compassion and reduce physiological responses to stressors and so may support sensitive parenting. The current study tested the effects of a LKM on parent sensitivity and salivary alpha amylase (sAA) during a parent-child interaction.

Previously institutionalized toddlers' social and emotional competence and kindergarten adjustment: Indirect effects through executive function.

Longitudinal multimethod data across three time points were examined to explore the associations between previously institutionalized toddlers' ( = 71; 59% female) socioemotional skills (Time Point 1: 18 months to 3-years-old), executive functioning (i.e., attention, working memory, inhibitory control) in the preschool years (Time Point 2: 2-4-years-old), and adjustment in kindergarten (5-6-years-old).

Maternal stress and development of infant attention to threat-related facial expressions.

Attentional biases to threat-related stimuli, such as fearful and angry facial expressions, are important to survival and emerge early in development. Infants demonstrate an attentional bias to fearful facial expressions by 5-7 months of age and an attentional bias toward anger by 3 years of age that are modulated by experiential factors. In a longitudinal study of 87 mother-infant dyads from families predominantly experiencing low income, we examined whether maternal stress and depressive symptoms were associated with trajectories of attentional biases to threat, assessed during an attention disengagement eye-tracking task when infants were 6-, 9-, and 12-month old.

Infants' abilities to respond to cues for joint attention vary by family socioeconomic status.

The influence of socioeconomic variability on language and cognitive development is present from toddlerhood to adolescence and calls for investigating its earliest manifestation. Response to joint attention (RJA) abilities constitute a foundational developmental milestone that are associated with future language, cognitive, and social skills. How aspects of the family home environment shape RJA skills is relatively unknown.

Neglect, HPA axis reactivity, and development.

Neglect is a common and frequently chronic form of child maltreatment that can compromise child development and increase the risk of physical and psychological problems. In this review, we discuss one of the potential ways neglect becomes biologically embedded by shaping the development of a key stress responsive system: namely, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Several potential mediators and moderators of this process are examined, including inflammation, attachment and social buffering, self-regulation, child sex and age, and genetics.