Promoting resilience: A preschool intervention enhances the adolescent adjustment of children exposed to early adversity.

Two hundred ninety-four children from low-income families (58% White, 17% Latinx, 25% Black; 54% girls; Mage = 4.49 years old at study entry) were recruited from Head Start classrooms to participate in a randomized-controlled trial of the project Research-based, Developmentally Informed (REDI) preschool intervention and then followed longitudinally for 10 years through 9th grade. At study entry, parents reported on their children's exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Youth reported on their feelings of social-emotional distress and school bonding after making the transition into middle school (7th grade) and high school (9th grade). Multilevel latent profile analyses revealed three profiles of adolescent distress and school bonding. Increased rates of ACEs in early childhood predicted membership in adolescent profiles characterized by heightened social-emotional distress and reduced levels of school bonding. The REDI intervention that focused on promoting early social-emotional and language skills in preschool moderated the impact of early ACEs on adolescent adjustment and promoted youth resilience, significantly buffering children from the negative impact of early ACEs on their levels of social-emotional distress and school bonding. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Longitudinal Associations Linking Elementary and Middle School Contexts with Student Aggression in Early Adolescence.

Growing up in poverty increases youth risk for developing aggressive behavior problems, which, in turn, are associated with a host of problematic outcomes, including school drop-out, substance use, mental health problems, and delinquency. In part, this may be due to exposure to adverse school contexts that create socialization influences supporting aggression. In the current study, 356 children from low-income families (58% White, 17% Latinx, 25% Black; 54% girls) were followed from preschool through seventh grade. Longitudinal data included measures of the school-level contexts experienced by study participants during their elementary and middle school years, including school levels of poverty (percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch) and academic achievement (percentage of students scoring below the basic proficiency level on state achievement tests). Regression analyses suggested little impact of these school-level contexts on teacher or parent ratings of aggression in fifth grade, controlling for child baseline aggression and demographics. In contrast, school-level contexts had significant effects on child aggression in seventh grade with unique contributions by school-level achievement, controlling for child fifth grade aggression and elementary school contexts along with baseline covariates. These effects were robust across teacher and parent ratings. Findings are discussed in terms of understanding the school-based socialization of aggressive behavior and implications for educational policy and prevention programming.