Longitudinal Associations Between Attachment Representations Coded in the Adult Attachment Interview in Late Adolescence and Perceptions of Romantic Relationship Adjustment in Adulthood.

Increasingly, researchers have operationalized Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)-derived attachment representations as reflecting individual differences in secure base script knowledge (AAI)-the degree to which individuals show awareness of the temporal-causal schema that summarizes the basic features of seeking and receiving effective support from caregivers when in distress. In a series of pre-registered analyses, we used AAI transcripts recently re-coded for AAI and leveraged a new follow-up assessment of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development cohort at around age 30 years (479 currently partnered participants; 59% female; 82% White/non-Hispanic) to assess and compare the links between AAI and traditional AAI coding measures at around age 18 years and self-reported romantic relationship quality in adulthood. Higher AAI predicted better dyadic adjustment scores in adulthood ( = 0.

Meta-analytic associations between the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale and students' social competence with peers.

According to developmental psychologists, more supportive and less conflictual relationships with teachers play a positive role in children's social behavior with peers both concurrently and in the future. This meta-analysis examined the association between teacher-student relationship quality, as measured by the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS; Pianta, 2001a), and social competence from early childhood through high school. Based on nearly 30,000 students from 87 studies, the weighted average association between teacher-student relationship quality and social competence with peers was = .

How does adversity relate to performance across different abilities within individuals?

The idea that some abilities might be enhanced by adversity is gaining traction. Adaptation-based approaches have uncovered a few specific abilities enhanced by particular adversity exposures. Yet, for a field to grow, we must not dig too deep, too soon.

Why does perceived parenting in adolescence predict maladaptive personality in adulthood? Evidence for substantial genetic mediation.

Why is parenting in adolescence predictive of maladaptive personality in adulthood? This study sets out to investigate environmental and genetic factors underlying the association between parenting and maladaptive personality longitudinally in a large sample of twins. The present study addressed this question via a longitudinal study focused on two cohorts of twins assessed on aspects of perceived parenting (parent- and adolescent-reported) at age 14 years ( =1,094 pairs). Participants were followed to adulthood, and maladaptive personality traits were self-reported using the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) at age 24 or 34 years.

Using moderated nonlinear factor models to adjust for differential item functioning in the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale from kindergarten to Grade 6.

Prior research has demonstrated that children form developmentally salient relationships with teachers and that these relationships are uniquely predictive of subsequent functioning both in and outside of school. However, prior work estimating trajectories and predictors of teacher-student relationship quality has failed to test and adjust for bias in questionnaire items. The present study used longitudinal data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD; N = 1140) to test and adjust for measurement bias in the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS; Pianta, 2001) across grades (K-6) and sociodemographic characteristics (i.

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 , either in the context of the Attachment Script Assessment (ASA) or during the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Preliminary evidence from a high-risk sample showed that AAI 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.

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.

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 (M = 70.

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.

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.

Pubertal timing: A life course pathway linking early life risk to adulthood cardiometabolic health.

Objective: To evaluate a series of prospective life course models testing whether the timing of pubertal development is a pathway through which prepubertal risk factors may influence adulthood cardiometabolic health.

Methods: Subjects were 655 female participants in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) and recent SECCYD 30-year follow-up, the Study of Health in Early and Adult Life (SHINE). Prepubertal risk factors included maternal menarcheal age, child race/ethnicity, child health status indicators, and child adversity indicators.

Attachment relationship quality with mothers and fathers and child temperament: An individual participant data meta-analysis.

A growing body of research suggests that, compared with single parent-child attachment relationships, child developmental outcomes may be better understood by examining the configurations of child-mother and child-father attachment relationships (i.e., attachment networks).

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 ( = .19) and externalizing behavior ( = -.15), but weakly associated with internalizing symptoms ( = -.

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.

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 (M : 19.84 months; 51% female; 87% White) were included in the linear mixed effects analyses.

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.

Connecting loneliness with pathological personality traits: Evidence for genetic and environmental mediation from a study of older twins.

Loneliness has broad public health importance, especially in older adulthood, and there is some evidence suggesting it is associated with several personality disorders (PDs). The etiology of these PD-loneliness associations, however, has rarely been studied, especially in the context of the maladaptive traits of the DSM-5 alternative model of personality disorder (AMPD). To address these limitations, we estimated phenotypic, genetic, and unique environmental associations between loneliness and maladaptive personality traits in a sample of older adults from the Minnesota Twin Registry ( = 1,356, = 70.

Thirty-year follow-up of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD): the challenges and triumphs of conducting in-person research at a distance.

Purpose: The purpose of the current study, The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Health in Early and Adult Life (SHINE), was to build on the landmark Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD), a longitudinal birth cohort initiated in 1991, by conducting a health-focused follow-up of the now adult participants. This effort has produced an invaluable resource for the pursuit of life course research examining links between early life risk and resilience factors and adulthood health and disease risk.

Participants: Of the 927 NICHD SECCYD participants available for recruitment in the current study, 705 (76.

The Quality of Early Caregiving and Teacher-Student Relationships in Grade School Independently Predict Adolescent Academic Achievement.

Prior research has demonstrated that teacher-student relationships characterized by high levels of closeness and low levels of conflict are associated with higher levels of academic achievement among children. At the same time: (a) some research suggests that the quality of teacher-student relationships in part reflects the quality of early caregiving; and (b) the observed quality of early care by primary caregivers robustly predicts subsequent academic achievement. Given the potential for associations between the quality of teacher-student relationship quality and academic achievement to thus be confounded by the quality of early parenting experiences, the present study examined to what extent children's experiences in early life with primary caregivers (i.

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 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.

Conceptual comparison of constructs as first step in data harmonization: Parental sensitivity, child temperament, and social support as illustrations.

This article presents a strategy for the initial step of data harmonization in Individual Participant Data syntheses, i.e., making decisions as to which measures operationalize the constructs of interest - and which do not.

Early maternal sensitivity and markers of physical health: Enduring or transient associations from childhood to adulthood?

Individual differences in the quality of early experiences with primary caregivers have been reliably implicated in the development of socioemotional adjustment and, more recently, physical health. However, few studies have examined the development of such associations with physical health into the adult years. To that end, the current study used prospective, longitudinal data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development ( = 1,306, 52% male, 77% White/non-Hispanic) to investigate whether associations between direct observations of maternal sensitivity in the first 3 years of life and repeated assessments of two commonly used, objective indicators of physical health (i.

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; = 267; 45.3% female) and the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS; = 2,587; 48.

Patterns of Early Life Weight Gain and Female Onset of Puberty.

Context: Prepubertal obesity is a well-established predictor of earlier pubertal onset, which is itself a risk factor for poor health and well-being. Identifying specific patterns of weight gain in early life may help explain differential risk for earlier pubertal onset.

Objective: The objective of the study was to examine patterns of weight gain across infancy and early childhood in relation to pubertal onset outcomes.