Maternal obesity, gestational diabetes mellitus, and diet in association with neurodevelopment of 2-year-old children.

BACKGROUND: Maternal metabolic disturbances and diet may influence long-term infantile neurodevelopment. We investigated whether maternal gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), obesity, and diet could affect the neurodevelopment of 2-year-old children. METHODS: Neurodevelopment of children (n = 243) born to mothers with overweight or obesity was assessed with the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development-Third Edition, and the Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination. Maternal adiposity was determined by air displacement plethysmography, and GDM with an oral glucose tolerance test. Dietary assessment included diet quality and fish consumption questionnaires, and three-day food diaries, from which dietary inflammatory index (DII®) scores were computed. RESULTS: GDM was associated with weaker expressive language skills (adj.ß = -1.12, 95% CI = -2.10;-0.15), and higher maternal adiposity with weaker cognitive, language, and motor skills in children (adj.p < 0.05). Maternal good dietary quality (adj.ß = 0.87, 95% CI = 0.004;1.73) and higher fish consumption (adj.p = 0.02) were related to better expressive language skills. DII scores were not associated with children's neurodevelopment. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that GDM and higher maternal adiposity may lead to weaker neurodevelopmental skills, although still within the mean normative range in this population of children. Good dietary quality and higher fish consumption during pregnancy could benefit a child's language development. IMPACT: Gestational diabetes mellitus and maternal higher adiposity may have unfavorable effects on a 2-year-old child's neurodevelopment. An overall good quality of diet and higher fish consumption during pregnancy may result in more favorable cognitive and language skills when the child is 2-year-old. Our findings reveal that women with overweight or obesity, a risk group for pregnancy complications, could benefit from dietary counseling to support their children's neurodevelopment.

Child Temperament and Total Diurnal Cortisol in Out-of-Home Center-Based Child Care and in At-Home Parental Care.

The association between child temperament characteristics and total diurnal saliva cortisol in 84 children (M = 2.3 years, SD = 0.6) attending out-of-home, center-based child care and 79 children (M = 2.0 years, SD = 0.5) attending at-home parental care was examined. Saliva samples were collected during two consecutive days, that is, Sunday and Monday, with four samples taken per day. While children higher in surgency had higher total diurnal cortisol production, we did not find evidence that temperament moderated the associations between child-care context and total diurnal cortisol. Negative affectivity and effortful control were not related to cortisol output. Our findings suggest that temperamental surgency may be associated with higher total cortisol production in early childhood across child-care settings.

Children's diurnal cortisol output and temperament in two different childcare settings at 2 and 3.5 years of age.

Prior research suggests that child temperament may play an important role in early childhood stress regulation. We compared children's diurnal cortisol and the association between cortisol and temperament in two different childcare settings. Cortisol was measured from saliva samples over 2 days in children (N = 84) attending out-of-home childcare and in children (N = 27), who were cared for at home at the age of 3.5 years. There was no difference between the childcare groups in total diurnal cortisol. However, of the individual measurements, afternoon cortisol levels were higher in the out-of-home childcare group during their childcare day when compared with their home day. Child temperament was not associated with total diurnal cortisol. Comparison with our prior measurements showed that the association between temperamental surgency/extroversion and total diurnal cortisol diminished along with the child age from 2 to 3.5 years in both childcare settings. This may indicate that more extroverted children are physiologically more reactive to environmental stimuli when they are younger, but this association does not appear as the children develop. Our results further suggest that the afternoon hours in the out-of-home childcare may be demanding and accelerate the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis activation in young children independent of their age.

Toddlers' diurnal cortisol levels affected by out-of-home, center-based childcare and at-home, guardian-supervised childcare: comparison between different caregiving contexts.

Previous research suggests that attending non-parental out-of-home childcare is associated with elevated cortisol levels for some children. We aimed to compare diurnal saliva cortisol levels between children having out-of-home, center-based childcare or those having at-home, guardian-supervised childcare in Finland. A total of 213 children, aged 2.1 years (SD = 0.6), were drawn from the ongoing Finnish birth cohort study. Saliva samples were collected over 2 consecutive days (Sunday and Monday), with four samples drawn during each day: 30 min after waking up in the morning, at 10 am, between 2 and 3 pm, and in the evening before sleep. These results suggest that the shapes of the diurnal cortisol profiles were similar in both childcare groups following a typical circadian rhythm. However, the overall cortisol levels were on average 30% higher (95% CI: [9%, 54%], p = .004) with the at-home childcare in comparison with the out-of-home childcare group. Furthermore, a slight increase in the diurnal cortisol pattern was noticed in both groups and in both measurement days during the afternoon. This increase was 27% higher ([2%, 57%], p = .031) in the out-of-home childcare group during the out-of-home childcare day in comparison with the at-home childcare day. The elevated afternoon cortisol levels were partly explained by the afternoon naps, but there were probably other factors as well producing the cortisol rise during the afternoon hours. Further research is needed to define how a child's individual characteristic as well as their environmental factors associate with cortisol secretion patterns in different caregiving contexts.

Working memory in very-low-birthweight children at the age of 11 years.

The aim of this study is to investigate the working memory (WM) of very-low-birthweight (VLBW, ≤ 1500 g) children at the age of 11 years using Baddeley's WM model. A regional cohort of 95 VLBW children was assessed for the domains of the WM model (central executive [CE], visuospatial sketchpad [VS], and phonological loop [PL]) using subtests from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children (WMTB-C) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Fourth Edition (WISC-IV). VLBW children were categorized into three groups according to their degree of brain pathology (normal, minor, or major) in neonatal brain magnetic resonance imaging at the term age, and the WM performance was compared between groups to test norms. The structure of the WM model was studied by analyzing correlations among domains. Even VLBW children with normal cognitive development (general ability index ≥ 85) performed worse compared to the test norms (M = 100, SD = 15) on CE (M = 87.64, SD = 20.54, p < .001) and VS (M = 91.65, SD = 11.03, p < .001), but their performance on PL was above the norm (M = 110.79, SD = 13.79, p < .001). VLBW children with major brain pathology performed significantly worse on VS and PL compared to the other groups. The correlations among the WM domains of the VLBW children differ from earlier findings in normative populations. To conclude, the WM of the VLBW children in the study differ-especially in the CE and VS subtest scores-from the normative population irrespective of the degree of brain pathology and level of cognitive development.

A process view on implementing an antibullying curriculum: How teachers differ and what explains the variation.

The present study provides a person-centered view on teachers' adherence to the KiVa antibullying curriculum over a school year. Factor mixture modeling was used to examine how teachers (N = 282) differed in their implementation profiles and multinomial logistic regression was used to identify factors related to these profiles. On the basis of lesson adherence across time, 3 types of implementers emerged: (a) high implementers (53%) started at a very high level and remained so over time, (b) moderate implementers (30%) consistently utilized more than half of the lesson material, and (c) surrenders (17%) started at a high level that soon declined. Teachers' beliefs toward program effectiveness were positively associated with starting at higher levels of fidelity (high and surrenders), whereas principal support for antibullying work predicted maintaining the initial level of implementation over the school year (high and moderate). Finally, good lesson preparation was associated with higher levels of implementation throughout the school year (the high group). Student engagement, participation in preimplementation training or classroom management skills were not related to 3 implementation profiles. The findings highlight the importance of individual and interpersonal factors for successful implementation of school-based bullying prevention programs.

Motivational-emotional vulnerability and difficulties in learning to read and spell.

BACKGROUND: Although the relationship between motivation and learning problems has been studied in older children, little is known about how these factors interact during the first years of schooling or even earlier. AIMS: To compare the development of motivational-emotional profiles from preschool to grade 2 between groups classified as poor readers, good decoders and good readers in grade 2. To study the possibility that diverging motivational-emotional paths occur concomitantly with school experience. SAMPLE: A total of 127 children were followed longitudinally from preschool up to the second grade. In preschool, their mean age was 6 years 8 months. METHOD: Two different methods tapping motivational-emotional vulnerability were used. Firstly, researchers at preschool age and classroom teachers in grades 1 and 2 rated children's task, ego-defensive and social dependence orientations. Secondly, an experimental situation was arranged each year where children's play behaviour with LEGO bricks was observed in free play vs. in induced pressure situations, and their motivational orientations were scored. RESULTS: In preschool, the motivational-emotional profiles were almost the same among the three prospective reading-level groups, but in grades 1 and 2, classroom teachers rated poor readers as less task-oriented and more ego-defensive and socially dependent compared to good decoders and good readers. The ratings were corroborated by observational data on play behaviour in induced pressure situations. CONCLUSIONS: Early problems in learning to read and spell are related to motivational-emotional vulnerability in learning situations in the school context.

The KiVa antibullying curriculum and outcome: does fidelity matter?

Research on school-based prevention suggests that the success of prevention programs depends on whether they are implemented as intended. In antibullying program evaluations, however, limited attention has been paid to implementation fidelity. The present study fills in this gap by examining the link between the implementation of the KiVa antibullying program and outcome. With a large sample of 7413 students (7-12years) from 417 classrooms within 76 elementary schools, we tested whether the degree of implementation of the student lessons in the KiVa curriculum was related to the effectiveness of the program in reducing bullying problems in classrooms. Results of multilevel structural equation modeling revealed that after nine months of implementation, lesson adherence as well as lesson preparation time (but not duration of lessons) were associated with reductions in victimization at the classroom level. No statistically significant effects, however, were found for classroom-level bullying. The different outcomes for victimization and bullying as well as the importance of documenting program fidelity are discussed.

Early words, multiword utterances and maternal reading strategies as predictors of mastering word inflections in Finnish.

This is the first study to report how children's language skills and mothers' book-reading strategies, measured at 2;0, predict mastery of word inflections at 3;0 and 5;0 in a sample of 66 Finnish children. Three theoretical models were tested on the longitudinal data using path analyses. The testing of the models suggests direct developmental continuity from producing words and multiword utterances on later inflectional growth, but indirect effects of maternal strategies on language outcomes. Moreover, mothers' complex expansions and questions are positively related, whereas labellings and corrections are negatively related, to children's concurrent and subsequent language skills. Finally, vocabulary size relates negatively to maternal attention regulation. When joint attention is easily built up in the dyad, mothers concentrate more on direct reading, which, together with the child's vocabulary, predicts mastery of inflections. In conclusion, the results can be viewed as support for a child-driven view on the future course of language acquisition.