Configurations of mother-child and father-child attachment relationships as predictors of child language competence: An individual participant data meta-analysis.

An individual participant data meta-analysis was conducted to test pre-registered hypotheses about how the configuration of attachment relationships to mothers and fathers predicts children's language competence. Data from seven studies (published between 1985 and 2014) including 719 children (Mage : 19.84 months; 51% female; 87% White) were included in the linear mixed effects analyses. Mean language competence scores exceeded the population average across children with different attachment configurations. Children with two secure attachment relationships had higher language competence scores compared to those with one or no secure attachment relationships (d = .26). Children with two organized attachment relationships had higher language competence scores compared to those with one organized attachment relationship (d = .23), and this difference was observed in older versus younger children in exploratory analyses. Mother-child and father-child attachment quality did not differentially predict language competence, supporting the comparable importance of attachment to both parents in predicting developmental outcomes.

Agreement between retrospective and prospective assessments of childhood abuse revisited.

A recent meta-analytic review demonstrated that retrospective assessments of childhood abuse acquired during adulthood - typically via self-report - demonstrate weak agreement with assessments of maltreatment gathered prospectively. The current report builds on prior findings by investigating the agreement of prospectively documented abuse from birth to age 17.5 years in the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation with retrospective, Adult Attachment Interview-based assessments of childhood abuse administered at ages 19 and 26 years. In this sample, an agreement between prospective and retrospective assessments of childhood abuse was considerably stronger (κ = .56) than was observed meta-analytically. Retrospective assessments identified prospectively documented sexual abuse somewhat better than physical abuse, and the retrospective approach taken here was more sensitive to identifying abuse perpetrated by primary caregivers compared to non-caregivers based on prospective records.

Insights into child abuse and neglect: Findings from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation.

The Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) is a landmark prospective, longitudinal study of human development focused on a sample of mothers experiencing poverty and their firstborn children. Although the MLSRA pioneered a number of important topics in the area of social and emotional development, it began with the more specific goal of examining the antecedents of child maltreatment. From that foundation and for more than 40 years, the study has produced a significant body of research on the origins, sequelae, and measurement of childhood abuse and neglect. The principal objectives of this report are to document the early history of the MLSRA and its contributions to the study of child maltreatment and to review and summarize results from the recently updated childhood abuse and neglect coding of the cohort, with particular emphasis on findings related to adult adjustment. While doing so, we highlight key themes and contributions from Dr Dante Cicchetti's body of research and developmental psychopathology perspective to the MLSRA, a project launched during his tenure as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota.

Which aspects of education are health protective? a life course examination of early education and adulthood cardiometabolic health in the 30-year study of early child care and Youth Development (SECCYD).

BACKGROUND: Past research describes robust associations between education and health, yet findings have generally been limited to the examination of education as the number of years of education or educational attainment. Little is known about the specific features or processes underpinning education that are health protective. The objective of the current study was to address this gap by examining specific aspects of early education pertaining to student characteristics and experiences, as well as features of the classroom environment, in predicting cardiometabolic health in adulthood. METHODS: Subjects were 1364 participants in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD, 1991-2009) and recent SECCYD 30-year follow-up, the Study of Health in Early and Adult Life (SHINE, 2018-2022). Models examined individual education indicators (student social skills, student-teacher relationship quality, and classroom emotional and instructional quality in the period of elementary school and student academic performance between ages 54 months and 15 years) in relation to a composite of cardiometabolic risk in adulthood (ages 26-31), reflecting central adiposity, blood pressure, insulin resistance, inflammation, and dyslipidemia. Models were adjusted for key explanatory factors including socio-demographics, infant characteristics, parental socioeconomic status (SES), and child health status. Follow-up analyses were performed to test potential mediators of early education effects on adult health, including adult SES (educational attainment, household income) and health behaviors (diet quality, activity level, sleep duration, smoking). RESULTS: In adjusted models, results showed greater student social skills, indexed by a mean of annual teacher ratings between kindergarten and 6th grade, predicted lower cardiometabolic risk in adulthood (ß=-0.009, p <.05). In follow-up analyses, results showed the protective effect of student social skills on cardiometabolic risk may be mediated by adult income (ß=-0.0014, p <.05) and diet quality (ß=-0.0031, p <.05). Effects of the other early education indicators were non-significant (ps > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Findings point to the potential significance of early student social competence as a link to long-term health, possibly via the acquisition of resources needed for the maintenance of health, as well as through engagement in health behaviors supporting healthy eating. However, more research is needed to replicate these findings and to elaborate on the role of early student social competence and the pathways explaining its effects on cardiometabolic health in adulthood.

Maladaptive personality traits and older adult relationship satisfaction: A co-twin control approach to understanding associations.

OBJECTIVE: Maladaptive personality traits have been implicated in romantic relationship dissatisfaction, but the etiology of those links and the degree to which they extend to other types of relationships are unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine associations between maladaptive personality traits and satisfaction in various relationships using a co-twin control design to identify potential environmental contributions. METHOD: The sample consisted of 1340 older adult twin participants from the Minnesota Twin Registry (Mage = 70.3) that completed the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 Faceted Brief Form and Network of Relationships Inventory (Revised for Older Adults). RESULTS: Several maladaptive personality traits were phenotypically associated with relationship dissatisfaction, with detachment and negative affect having the largest effects. Further, within twin pair differences in detachment and negative affect were associated with greater relationship dissatisfaction, suggesting that observed associations were mediated partly by the unique environment, not solely the result of genetic and familial confounding. Both phenotypic and co-twin associations were strongest overall in the romantic partner relationship. CONCLUSION: These findings support the notion that maladaptive personality traits are implicated in interpersonal dysfunction across multiple domains.

Caregiving Antecedents of Secure Base Script Knowledge Inferred from the Adult Attachment Interview: A Comparative, Pre-Registered Analysis.

Attachment theorists claim that the quality of parental support is internalized as a mental representation of early relationship experiences. Increasingly, the content of attachment representations is evaluated by studying the extent to which adults demonstrate knowledge of the secure base script, either in the context of the Attachment Script Assessment (ASA) or during the Adult Attachment Interview (AAIsbs). Preliminary evidence from a high-risk sample showed that AAIsbs was more strongly associated with the quality of antecedent caregiving than was the more traditional approach to the measurement of adult attachment focused on the coherence of adults' AAI discourse (Waters, et al., 2017). Drawing on new coding of data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD), we found that AAIsbs around age 18 years was significantly predicted by observations of maternal (r = .21) and paternal (r = .12) sensitivity assessed prospectively through age 15 years, and with attachment security in the first three years of life (r =.08). AAIsbs was also associated with existing measures of adult attachment (rs = .31-.42). Pre-registered analyses revealed that AAIsbs performed in a manner roughly comparable to traditional, though more labor intensive approaches to coding the AAI. Based on all available evidence from the SECCYD and the pragmatic challenges and advantages of different narrative methods for assessing adult attachment representations (Booth-LaForce & Roisman, 2014; Steele et al., 2014), researchers seeking to measure attachment representations should strongly consider the strengths of the ASA in term of practicality, performance, and adaptability to various age groups across development (Waters & Waters, 2021).

Registered Reports in Child Development: Introduction to the Special Section.

Registered Reports (RRs) are an emerging format for publishing empirical journal articles in which the decision to publish an article is based on sound conceptualization, methods, and planned analyses rather than the specific nature of the results. This article introduces the Special Section on Registered Reports in Child Development by describing what RRs are and why they are necessary, outlining the thought process that guided the Special Section, describing key thematic insights across the eight articles included in the collection, and providing recommendations for developmental researchers interested in publishing via the RR format. This article also serves as a formal announcement that RRs will be a standard publishing option at Child Development, effective immediately.

Formalizing theories of child development: Introduction to the special section.

Here we introduce a Special Section of Child Development entitled "Formalizing Theories of Child Development." This Special Section features five papers that use mathematical models to advance our understanding of central questions in the study of child development. This landmark collection is timely: it signifies growing awareness that rigorous empirical bricks are not enough; we need solid theory to build the house. By stating theory in mathematical terms, formal models make concepts, assumptions, and reasoning more explicit than verbal theory does. This increases falsifiability, promotes cumulative science, and enables integration with mathematical theory in allied disciplines. The Special Section contributions cover a range of topics: the developmental origins of counting, interactions between mathematics and language development, visual exploration and word learning in infancy, referent identification by toddlers, and the emergence of typical and atypical development. All are written in an accessible manner and for a broad audience.

Behavioral, cognitive, and socioemotional pathways from early childhood adversity to BMI: Evidence from two prospective, longitudinal studies.

Childhood adversity is associated with higher adult weight, but few investigations prospectively test mechanisms accounting for this association. Using two socioeconomically high-risk prospective longitudinal investigations, the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA; N = 267; 45.3% female) and the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS; n = 2,587; 48.5% female), pathways between childhood adversity and later body mass index (BMI) were tested using impulsivity, emotion dysregulation, and overeating as mediators. Childhood adversity from 0 to 5 years included four types of adversities: greater unpredictability, threat/abuse, deprivation/neglect, and low socioeconomic status. Parents reported on child impulsivity, emotion dysregulation, and overeating. Height and weight were self-reported and measured at 32 and 37 years in MLSRA and at 15 years in FFCWS. FFCWS results indicated that threat, deprivation, and low socioeconomic status predicted greater impulsivity and emotion dysregulation at 5 years, which in turn predicted greater overeating at 9 years and higher BMI z-score at 15 years. Early unpredictability in FFCWS predicted higher BMI through greater impulsivity but not emotion dysregulation at age 5. MLSRA regression results replicated the threat/abuse → emotion dysregulation → overeating → higher BMI pathway. These findings suggest that different dimensions of early adversity may follow both similar and unique pathways to predict BMI.

The predictive validity of the strange situation procedure: Evidence from registered analyses of two landmark longitudinal studies.

Meta-analyses demonstrate that the quality of early attachment is modestly associated with peer social competence (r = .19) and externalizing behavior (r = -.15), but weakly associated with internalizing symptoms (r = -.07) across early development (Groh et al., Child Development Perspectives, 11(1), 70-76, 2017). Nonetheless, these reviews suffer from limitations that undermine confidence in reported estimates, including evidence for publication bias and the lack of comprehensive assessments of outcome measures from longitudinal studies in the literature. Moreover, theoretical claims regarding the specificity of the predictive significance of early attachment variation for socioemotional versus academic outcomes had not been evaluated when the analyses for this report were registered (but see Dagan et al., Child Development, 1-20, 2023; Deneault et al., Developmental Review, 70, 101093, 2023). To address these limitations, we conducted a set of registered analyses to evaluate the predictive validity of infant attachment in two landmark studies of the Strange Situation: the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) and the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD). Across-time composite assessments reflecting teacher report, mother report, and self-reports of each outcome measure were created. Bivariate associations between infant attachment security and socioemotional outcomes in the MLSRA were comparable to, or slightly weaker than, those reported in the recent meta-analyses, whereas those in the SECCYD were weaker for these outcomes. Controlling for four demographic covariates, partial correlation coefficients between infant attachment and all socioemotional outcomes were r ≤ .10 to .15 in both samples. Compositing Strange Situations at ages 12 and 18 months did not substantively alter the predictive validity of the measure in the MLSRA, though a composite measure of three different early attachment measures in the SECCYD did increase predictive validity coefficients. Associations between infant attachment security and academic skills were unexpectedly comparable to (SECCYD) or larger than (MLSRA) those observed with respect to socioemotional outcomes.

Exploring the meaning of unresolved loss and trauma in more than 1,000 Adult Attachment Interviews.

Unresolved states of mind regarding experiences of loss/abuse (U/d) are identified through lapses in the monitoring of reasoning, discourse, and behavior surrounding loss/abuse in response to the Adult Attachment Interview. Although the coding system for U/d has been widely used for decades, the individual indicators of unresolved loss/abuse have not been validated independently of the development sample. This study examined the psychometric validity of U/d, using individual participant data from 1,009 parent-child dyads across 13 studies. A latent class analysis showed that subsets of commonly occurring U/d indicators could differentiate interviewees with or without unresolved loss/abuse. Predictive models suggested a psychometric model of U/d consisting of a combination of these common indicators, with disbelief and psychologically confused statements regarding loss being especially important indicators of U/d. This model weakly predicted infant disorganized attachment. Multilevel regression analysis showed no significant association between ratings of unresolved other trauma and infant disorganized attachment, over and above ratings of unresolved loss/abuse. Altogether, these findings suggest that the coding system of U/d may have been overfitted to the initial development sample. Directions for further articulation and optimization of U/d are provided.

The latent structure of the adult attachment interview: Large sample evidence from the collaboration on attachment transmission synthesis.

The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) is a widely used measure in developmental science that assesses adults' current states of mind regarding early attachment-related experiences with their primary caregivers. The standard system for coding the AAI recommends classifying individuals categorically as having an autonomous, dismissing, preoccupied, or unresolved attachment state of mind. However, previous factor and taxometric analyses suggest that: (a) adults' attachment states of mind are captured by two weakly correlated factors reflecting adults' dismissing and preoccupied states of mind and (b) individual differences on these factors are continuously rather than categorically distributed. The current study revisited these suggestions about the latent structure of AAI scales by leveraging individual participant data from 40 studies (N = 3,218), with a particular focus on the controversial observation from prior factor analytic work that indicators of preoccupied states of mind and indicators of unresolved states of mind about loss and trauma loaded on a common factor. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that: (a) a 2-factor model with weakly correlated dismissing and preoccupied factors and (b) a 3-factor model that further distinguished unresolved from preoccupied states of mind were both compatible with the data. The preoccupied and unresolved factors in the 3-factor model were highly correlated. Taxometric analyses suggested that individual differences in dismissing, preoccupied, and unresolved states of mind were more consistent with a continuous than a categorical model. The importance of additional tests of predictive validity of the various models is emphasized.

Scripted attachment representations of current romantic relationships: measurement and validation.

This report describes the development and validation of a new coding system for the Current Relationship Interview (CRI) that assesses individual differences in secure base script knowledge with respect to adult romantic partners. Drawing on data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (N = 116) a coding system was developed to parallel the secure base script coding system for the Adult Attachment Interview. Specifically, CRIs conducted in adulthood were re-coded for the extent to which the interviews reflected script-like expectations that romantic partners are available and provide effective support in times of distress (CRIsbs). CRIsbs was moderately associated with the traditional coding system for the CRI and showed concurrent and/or predictive validity in relation to observed and self-reported romantic relationship quality as well as interview ratings of the effectiveness with which adults engaged in romantic relationships. Theoretical and practical benefits of the CRIsbs coding system are discussed.

The predictive significance of fluctuations in early maternal sensitivity for secure base script knowledge and relationship effectiveness in adulthood.

Attachment theory suggests that both the quality and consistency of early sensitive care should shape an individual's attachment working models and relationship outcomes across the lifespan. To date, most research has focused on the quality of early sensitive caregiving, finding that receiving higher quality care predicts more secure working models and better long-term relationship outcomes than receiving lower quality care. However, it remains unclear whether or how the consistency of early sensitive care impacts attachment working models and adult relationship functioning. In this research, we utilized data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation to examine to what extent the quality (i.e., mean levels) and consistency (i.e., within-person fluctuations) in behaviorally coded maternal sensitive care assessed 7 times from 3 months to 13 years prospectively predicts secure base script knowledge and relationship effectiveness (i.e., interpersonal competence in close relationships) in adulthood. We found that larger fluctuations and lower mean levels of early maternal sensitivity jointly predict lower relationship effectiveness in adulthood via lower secure base script knowledge. These findings reveal that nonlinear models of early caregiving experiences more completely account for relationship outcomes across the lifespan, beyond what traditional linear models have documented. Implications for attachment theory and longitudinal methods are discussed.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Retrospective Assessments of the Quality of Childhood Parenting: Prospective Evidence From Infancy to Age 26 Years.

Retrospective self-report assessments of adults' childhood experiences with their parents are widely employed in psychological science, but such assessments are rarely validated against actual parenting experiences measured during childhood. Here, we leveraged prospectively acquired data characterizing mother-child and father-child relationship quality using observations, parent reports, and child reports covering infancy through adolescence. At age 26 years, approximately 800 participants completed a retrospective measure of maternal and paternal emotional availability during childhood. Retrospective reports of childhood emotional availability demonstrated weak convergence with composites reflecting prospectively acquired observations (R2s = .01-.05) and parent reports (R2s = .02-.05) of parenting quality. Retrospective parental availability was more strongly associated with prospective assessments of child-reported parenting quality (R2s = .24-.25). However, potential sources of bias (i.e., depressive symptoms and family closeness and cohesiveness at age 26 years) accounted for more variance in retrospective reports (39%-40%) than did prospective measures (26%), suggesting caution when using retrospective reports of childhood caregiving quality as a proxy for prospective data.

Early Life Adversity and Pubertal Timing: Implications for Cardiometabolic Health.

OBJECTIVE: To identify early life adversity (ELA) risk factors for earlier pubertal timing, itself a risk factor for poor cardiometabolic health, and to determine whether such ELA-related risk may be mediated by pre-pubertal body mass index (BMI). METHODS: Subjects included 426 female participants in a prospective birth cohort study, the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Survival analysis models were fit to examine ELA exposures, representing childhood socioeconomic status (SES), maternal sensitivity, mother-child attachment, and negative life events, along with child health indicators and covariates, in relation to pubertal timing outcomes, including age at menarche and ages at Tanner stage II for breast and pubic hair development. RESULTS: Higher childhood SES emerged as an independent predictor of older age at menarche, showing each one standard deviation increase in childhood SES corresponded to a 1.3% increase in age at menarche (factor change = 1.013; 1.003-1.022; p < .01), but did not predict breast or pubic hair development (ps > .05). In mediation analyses, indirect (mediated) effects of mother-child attachment on the pubertal timing outcomes, via pre-pubertal BMI, were all statistically significant (ps < .05). CONCLUSIONS: Higher childhood SES predicted directly, and secure (vs. insecure) mother-child attachment predicted indirectly (via pre-pubertal BMI), later pubertal timing, suggesting these factors may protect girls from earlier pubertal development. By extension, clinical implications are that intervention strategies designed to lessen ELA- and pre-pubertal obesity-related risk may be effective in remediating life course pathways linking ELA, accelerated pubertal development, and cardiometabolic risk.

Editorial: A Vision of a Fair and Efficient, Diverse and Inclusive, Cumulative Science of Child Development in the Best and Worst of Times.

If you have come here in search of the submission requirements at Child Development, this is perhaps not the editorial you are looking for. Consider visiting instead our revised instructions to authors. Nor does this essay simply detail the priorities of the incoming board and the initiatives we will be implementing over the next 6 years, though these are summarized in Table 1. Rather, this editorial was written to articulate clearly the scientific values underlying current plans and policies at the journal in support of publishing the highest quality and highest impact research on child development. I emphasize two interrelated themes: (a) our plans for continuing to emphasize and enhance diversity and inclusion in research on child development and (b) our policies that remove impediments to cumulative developmental science. Discussion focuses primarily on how we are incentivizing efforts to achieve these widely held yet too often neglected goals, taking as its point of departure emerging challenges to a fair and efficient editorial process at the journal. In so doing, I mean to highlight the essential work of continuously cultivating editorial structures that firmly embed in developmental science fundamental scientific values, principles that make it possible for research on child development to flourish in both the best and worst of times.

Childhood abuse and neglect are prospectively associated with scripted attachment representations in young adulthood.

Waters, Ruiz, and Roisman (2017) recently published evidence based on the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) that sensitive caregiving during childhood is associated with higher levels of secure base script knowledge during the Adult Attachment Interview (AAIsbs). At present, however, little is known about the role of variation in atypical caregiving, including abuse and/or neglect, in explaining individual differences in AAIsbs. This study revisited data from the MLSRA (N = 157) to examine the association between experiencing abuse and/or neglect in the first 17.5 years of life and secure base script knowledge measured at ages 19 and 26 years. Several aspects of abuse and/or neglect experiences were assessed, including perpetrator identity, timing, and type. Regressions revealed that childhood abuse and/or neglect was robustly associated with lower AAIsbs scores in young adulthood, above and beyond previously documented associations with maternal sensitivity and demographic covariates. Follow-up analyses provided evidence that the predictive significance of abuse for secure base script knowledge was specific to perpetration by parental figures, rather than non-caregivers. Exploratory analyses indicated that abuse and/or neglect: (a) in middle childhood and adolescence (but not infancy and early childhood) and (b) physical abuse (but not sexual abuse or neglect) were uniquely associated with lower AAIsbs scores.

Life stress and cortisol reactivity: An exploratory analysis of the effects of stress exposure across life on HPA-axis functioning.

Stressful experiences affect biological stress systems, such as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Life stress can potentially alter regulation of the HPA axis and has been associated with poorer physical and mental health. Little, however, is known about the relative influence of stressors that are encountered at different developmental periods on acute stress reactions in adulthood. In this study, we explored three models of the influence of stress exposure on cortisol reactivity to a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) by leveraging 37 years of longitudinal data in a high-risk birth cohort (N = 112). The cumulative stress model suggests that accumulated stress across the lifespan leads to dysregulated reactivity, whereas the biological embedding model implicates early childhood as a critical period. The sensitization model assumes that dysregulation should only occur when stress is high in both early childhood and concurrently. All of the models predicted altered reactivity, but do not anticipate its exact form. We found support for both cumulative and biological embedding effects. However, when pitted against each other, early life stress predicted more blunted cortisol responses at age 37 over and above cumulative life stress. Additional analyses revealed that stress exposure in middle childhood also predicted more blunted cortisol reactivity.

Preexisting Executive Function Deficits and Change in Health Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

BACKGROUND: Executive functions (EF) support engagement in goal-directed behaviors, including several health behaviors. Stressful and cognitively demanding events can disrupt EFs and interfere with health behavior, possibly to a greater extent in those with preexisting EF deficits. This study examined the association between preexisting EF deficits and subsequent negative changes in eating patterns, physical activity, sedentariness, and alcohol/substance use during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHOD: Participants were 374 young adults in a follow-up study of the longitudinal, multisite Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD). Preexisting EF deficits were assessed with the Barkley Deficits in Executive Function Scales-Short Form, and personally impactful negative changes in four health behaviors (physical activity, unhealthy eating, sedentary time, alcohol/substance use) during the COVID-19 pandemic were subsequently assessed with the Epidemic-Pandemic Impacts Inventory. RESULTS: In ordered logistic regression models, higher preexisting total EF deficits were associated with greater negative impactful changes in physical activity and unhealthy eating, independent of sociodemographic variables, obesity, and (as relevant) accelerometer-based physical activity and pre-COVID-19 diet quality. Socioeconomic status moderated the association between total EF deficits and impactful change in alcohol/substance use, with EF deficits linked to greater impactful change in alcohol/substance use only in higher socioeconomic strata. CONCLUSION: Individuals with preexisting EF deficits appear more vulnerable to the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on several key health behaviors. As the pandemic unfolds, strategies may be needed to identify those with EF deficits (e.g., screening tools) and provide them with tailored support for chronic disease risk reduction.