Child Negative Emotionality and Caregiver Sensitivity Across Context: Links with Children's Kindergarten Behaviour Problems

Abstract

Behavioural adjustment is critical for children's school readiness. This study used data from a nationally representative sample of children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study -Birth Cohort. We examined the effects of interactions between children's negative emotionality, maternal sensitivity and preschool teacher sensitivity on children's kindergarten internalizing and externalizing behaviours. Parent report of children's negative emotionality and observations of maternal sensitivity were obtained at age 2 years, teacher sensitivity was observed in preschool and teacher report of children's behaviour problems was obtained in kindergarten. Negative emotionality moderated links between maternal sensitivity, teacher sensitivity and children's internalizing behaviours. For children high in negativity, maternal sensitivity was positively associated with internalizing behaviour in the context of low teacher sensitivity, whereas for children low in negativity, maternal sensitivity was negatively associated with internalizing behaviour. For children high or low in negativity, internalizing behaviour was comparable when teacher sensitivity was high regardless of maternal sensitivity. Maternal sensitivity and teacher sensitivity interacted to predict externalizing behaviour regardless of child negativity. Children who experienced high teacher sensitivity displayed comparable externalizing behaviour regardless of maternal sensitivity. When children experienced low teacher sensitivity, maternal sensitivity was negatively associated with externalizing behaviour. Interactions between child characteristics and caregiving across developmental contexts are discussed.

Reducing Poverty-Related Disparities in Child Development and School Readiness: The Smart Beginnings Tiered Prevention Strategy that Combines Pediatric Primary Care with Home Visiting

“…As first described in Bell's (1968) seminal description of reciprocal models of child development, then elaborated on by Sameroff and Chandler (1975), Patterson (1982), and others for specific types of problem behavior during early childhood (Scaramella & Leve, 2004;Shaw & Bell, 1993), each aspect of early relational health is likely influenced by a number of partiallyheritable child temperament dimensions-some of which may also be affected by poverty-and racism-related stressors during the prenatal period. Accordingly, individual differences in such attributes underlying reactivity and regulation, including attentional control, negative emotionality, inhibitory control, and behavioral inhibition have been documented to have both direct effects on multiple dimensions of school readiness (Blair, 2002;Eisenberg et al, 2010;Hartz & Williford, 2015;Razza et al, 2010), and influence how different dimensions of parenting are "received," influencing both relational health and pathways from relational health to school readiness (Liu et al, 2020;Shaw et al, 1998;Sitnick et al, 2015;Tiberio et al, 2016). Hence, as evidence suggests that children are active participants in their socialization process in general and the formation of relational health in particular, these child factors are incorporated into Fig.…”

The Role of Caregiver Support in the Development of Adaptive Approaches to Learning for Preschoolers Who Exhibit Anxious-Withdrawal

“…Furthermore, in the few pertinent studies identified, children who display higher levels of AW often demonstrate more maladaptive ATL in the classroom than peers (Dominquez, et al, 2009;Dominquez et al, 2010;Fantuzzo et al, 2005;Hartz & Williford, 2015;Hughes & Coplan, 2010). At the same time, preschoolers exhibiting AW have been found to demonstrate similar gains in ATL over the school year as peers (Dominquez et al, 2010), again highlighting the malleability of ATL and potential for these students to develop adaptive ATL skills despite having lower incoming levels of ATL.…”

“…The limited knowledge is understandable given that the pool of literature on AW is relatively small and the body of work on ATL is relatively new, especially for young children. A few studies, however, have more broadly examined how interactions between parenting practices, teaching practices, and a child's mental health predicts their level of school functioning (Buyse et al, 2011;Hartz & Williford, 2015).…”

“…For example, Hartz and Williford (2015) conducted a study examining this complex relationship in a group of kindergarteners. When teacher sensitivity was high, for the group of children with high preschool negative emotionality, no significant difference was noted in the level of internalizing behaviors they displayed as kindergarteners in the classroom, regardless of their preschool levels of maternal sensitivity.…”

“…For reasons described in the Results section, significant interactions were plotted at ± 0.5 SD away from the mean as opposed to the traditional ± 1 SD. Relevant calculators from http://www.quantpsy.org/interact (Preacher, Curran, & Bauer, 2006) were used to conduct simple slopes analyses given that they are appropriate for use with data from multilevel models that use complex survey data (Hartz & Williford, 2015;K. Preacher, personal communication, April 16, 2017).…”