Temperament influences on parenting and child psychopathology: Socio-economic disadvantage as moderator

Despite calls for research on how the socio-economic environment may be related to temperament we still do not know enough about the relationship between temperament and socio-economic disadvantage (SED). A particularly underresearched question in temperament research is how SED may moderate the temperament-parenting and the temperament-child psychopathology links. The paper argues that, to develop theory, future temperament studies should seek to explore how the timing, specificity or accumulation, level and duration and change of SED may be related not only to temperament but also to links between temperament and parenting and between temperament and child psychopathology

Fathers’ parenting, adverse life events, and adolescents’ emotional and eating disorder symptoms: the role of emotion regulation

Purpose: To investigate the role of emotion regulation in the relation between fathers’ parenting (specifically warmth, behavioral control and psychological control) and adolescents’ emotional and eating disorder symptoms, after adjustment for controls. Methods: A total of 203 11-18 year-old students from a school in a socio-economically disadvantaged area in North-East London completed questionnaires assessing emotional symptoms (measured with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire’s (SDQ) Emotional Symptoms Scale), eating disorder symptoms (measured with the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26)), difficulties in emotion regulation (measured with the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS)), and fathers’ overprotection and warmth, measured with the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI), as well as behavioral and psychological control. The confounding variables considered were number of proximal (i.e., during the last year) adverse life events experienced, gender, age, and socio-economic status (eligibility for free school meals). Results: Adolescents’ difficulties in emotion regulation mediated the link between fathers’ psychological control and adolescents’ emotional symptoms, but not the link between fathers’ parenting and adolescents’ eating disorder symptoms, which appeared to be more directly linked to fathers’ psychological control and number of proximal adverse life events experienced. Proximal adverse life events experienced were also strongly associated with difficulties in emotion regulation. Conclusions: The study findings have implications for intervention programs which may prove more fruitful in addressing adolescent emotional problems by targeting underlying emotion regulation abilities, and in addressing adolescent eating disorder symptoms by protecting adolescents with a recent experience of multiple adverse life events. Parenting programs also stand to benefit from the evidence presented in this study that paternal psychological control may have uniquely harmful consequences for adolescent development through the hampering or atrophying of emotion regulation abilities and the encouragement of eating disorders

Contextual risk and child psychopathology

In developmental psychopathology it almost goes without saying that contextual risk factors do not occur in isolation and that it is the combination of various risk factors that portends numerous negative child outcomes. Despite this, the body of literature that examines the relation between multiple risk exposure and child psychopathology using a cumulative risk approach is still relatively small. Even when studies use a cumulative risk approach they rarely test properly whether the relation between cumulative risk and child psychopathology is linear or nonlinear, with consequences for both theory development and intervention design: if cumulative risk impacts problem behavior in a positively accelerated exponential manner, for instance, it means that exposure to multiple risk is especially difficult to manage as problem behavior accelerates at a critical level of risk. Furthermore, few studies have actually examined factors that protect from negative outcomes in those exposed to cumulative risk and even fewer have explored cumulative protection in relation to cumulative risk. On the other hand, there is the view that a cumulative risk approach at least implicitly assumes that risk factors are, in essence, interchangeable. According to this view, the importance of testing for specificity should not be underestimated. Finally, the renewed interest in the role of neighborhood risk in child development has initiated a lively debate as to whether contextual risk should be operationalized at the family or the area level. In this letter I discuss these issues, and offer some suggestions as to how future research can address them

Superior social cognitive abilities in childhood are associated with better reward-seeking strategies in adolescence: evidence for a Social-Motivational Flexibility Model

We examined the role of a crucial component of Theory of Mind in childhood, namely the attribution of false beliefs to other agents, in the ability to adjust risk-taking strategies during decision-making in adolescence. The analytic sample was 9575 children from the UK's Millennium Cohort Study, followed at ages 5, 7, and 14 years. The ability to attribute false beliefs was measured at ages 5 and 7 years through a vignette version of the Sally-Anne Task administered by an unfamiliar assessor in a socially demanding dyadic interaction. Risk adjustment was measured at age 14 years with the Cambridge Gambling Task. Even after controlling for a range of individual and family factors, such as sex, ethnicity, verbal ability, family income, and parental education, as well as emotional and behavioural problems, we found that social cognitive abilities in childhood are positively associated with risk adjustment in decision-making during adolescence

The role of social cognition in mental health trajectories from childhood to adolescence

We investigated the association between an aspect of Theory of Mind in childhood, false-belief understanding, and trajectories of internalising (emotional and peer) and externalising (conduct and hyperactivity) problems in childhood and adolescence. The sample was 8408 children from the UK's Millennium Cohort Study, followed at ages 5, 7, 11, 14, and 17 years. Social cognitive abilities were measured at 5 and 7 years through a vignette version of the Sally-Anne task administered by an unfamiliar assessor in a socially demanding dyadic interaction. Internalising and externalising problems were measured via the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire at 7-17 years. Using latent growth modelling, and after controlling for sex, ethnicity, maternal education, verbal ability, and time-varying family income, we found that superior social cognitive abilities predicted a decrease in emotional problems over time. In sex-stratified analyses, they predicted decreasing conduct problem trajectories in females and lower levels of conduct problems at baseline in males

Decision-Making in Childhood Predicts Prodromal Eating Pathology in Adolescence

OBJECTIVE: Differences in decision-making under conditions of risk have been observed cross-sectionally in clinical groups of people with eating disorders but have never been studied longitudinally or in large cohorts. We investigated whether responses on the Cambridge Gambling Task (CGT), measured in the Millennium Cohort Study in childhood, would predict prodromal eating pathology in adolescence. METHOD: Regression models were built to explore relationships between CGT variables at age 11 years and prodromal eating pathology (body dissatisfaction, intention to lose weight, dietary restriction, significant under/overweight, and excessive exercise) at 14 years. RESULTS: In 11,303 boys and girls, those with better quality decision-making were 34% less likely to show an intention to lose weight (b = -0.40, odds ratio [OR] = 0.66, p < 0.05) and 34% less likely to be overweight (b = -0.41, relative risk ratio [RRR] = 0.66, p < 0.05). Those with higher risk-taking were 58% more likely to report dietary restriction (b = 0.45, OR = 1.58, p < 0.05) and 46% more likely to report excessive exercise (b = 0.38, OR = 1.46, p < 0.05). In the complete-cases sample, higher risk-adjustment scores were associated with a 47% increased risk of underweight (b = 0.39, RRR = 1.47, p < 0.05), and better quality of decision-making was associated with a 46% lower risk of overweight (b = -0.60, RRR = 0.54, p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Disadvantageous decision-making in childhood may predict prodromal eating pathology in adolescence and might represent a prevention target

The role of primary school composition in affective decision-making: A prospective cohort study

PURPOSE: School-level characteristics are known to be associated with pupils’ academic and cognitive ability but also their socioemotional development. This study examines, for the first time, whether primary school characteristics are associated with pupils’ affective decision-making too. METHODS: The sample included 3,141 children participating in the Millennium Cohort Study with available data on their school’s characteristics, according to the National Pupil Database, at age 7 years. Decision-making was measured using the Cambridge Gambling Task at age 11 years. We modelled data using a series of sex-stratified linear regression analyses of decision-making (risk‐taking, quality of decision‐making, risk adjustment, deliberation time, and delay aversion) against four indicators of school composition (academic performance and proportions among pupils who are native speakers of English, are eligible for free school meals and have special educational needs). RESULTS: After adjustment for individual and family-level confounding, schools with a higher average academic performance showed more delay aversion among males, and among females, higher deliberation time and lower risk-taking. Schools with proportionally more native English speakers had higher deliberation time among males. Schools with proportionally more pupils eligible for free school meals showed lower scores on quality of decision-making among males. Schools with proportionally more children with special educational needs showed better quality of decision-making among males and lower risk-taking among females. CONCLUSION: The findings of this study can be used to target support for primary schools. Interventions aiming to support lower-achieving schools and those with less affluent intakes could help to improve boys’ affective decision-making

Decision-making difficulties mediate the association between poor emotion regulation and eating disorder symptoms in adolescence

BACKGROUND: The emergence of eating problems during childhood increases the risk for eating disorders (EDs) during young adulthood. Previous studies highlight a relationship between poor self-regulation and onset of eating pathology. In this study, we investigated whether this association is mediated by decision-making difficulties. METHODS: To test this hypothesis, we used data from the Millennium Cohort Study. Decision-making performance was assessed with the Cambridge Gambling Task at age 11. Principal components analysis was used to derive an index of ED symptoms at age 14. The trajectories of scores of two subscales of the Child Social Behaviour Questionnaire, Independence and Self-Regulation (ISR) and Emotional Dysregulation (EmotDy), were modelled from ages 3 to 7 years in a latent growth curve analysis. The individual predicted values of the intercept (set at baseline, 3 years) and the slope (rate of annual change) were then used in the mediation analysis. RESULTS: In our sample of 11 303 individuals, there was evidence for mediation by three measures of decision-making at age 11 (poor quality of decision-making, delay aversion and low risk-adjustment) in the association between EmotDy across ages 3–7 and ED symptoms at age 14 even after the adjustment for relevant covariates. We found no evidence of association between ISR and ED symptoms. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that emotion regulation processes during childhood may be relevant for the future onset of ED symptoms via their association with decision-making skills. These findings, obtained from a large, representative, sample, shed light on the relationship between self-regulation, decision-making and symptoms of EDs

Poor written pragmatic skills are associated with internalising symptoms in childhood: evidence from a UK birth cohort study

Introduction: This study examined the relation between pragmatic language and internalising (depressive and anxiety) symptoms in 11-year-olds, using data from the 1958 British birth cohort study. Methods: The cohort children were asked at age 11 to write an essay on their life as they imagined it would be at age 25. We analysed 200 of these essays for relevance, organisation and context-dependent references. Results: We found associations between these aspects of pragmatic language and children's internalising symptom scores across parent and teacher ratings, even after adjustment for cognitive ability, socioeconomic position and structural language. Most notably, children writing more coherent essays had fewer teacher-rated internalising symptoms, after adjustment for confounders. Additionally, children who provided more relevant and varied information about their imagined future home-lives had fewer parent-rated internalising symptoms, after adjustment for confounders. Discussion: The unique associations between pragmatic language skills and internalising symptoms observed are notable but preliminary, highlighting both the need for further research and potential applications for risk-assessment tools