A Multigenerational Model of Environmental Risk for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Children and Families.

Background: In recent years, public discourse has increasingly brought institutional and structural racism to the foreground of discussion on the well-being of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities. Environmental toxicity in combination with the social triggers of institutional and structural racism are among the factors that shape the short- and long-term health of BIPOC Americans across multiple lifespans.

Objectives: We outline a Generation Model for examining the mechanisms through which institutional and structural racism promotes the intergenerational transmission of environmental health risk and family and interpersonal relationships across the life course and across multiple generations.

Longitudinal associations between self-regulation and the academic and behavioral adjustment of young children born preterm.

Much of the research to date about the structure of self-regulation in early childhood has been conducted with low medical risk samples, with the general conclusion that self-regulation can be separated into overlapping executive function and effortful control factors that differentially predict child outcomes. We examined the factor structure of 36-month self-regulation among children born prematurely ( = 168) and the extent to which self-regulation predicted maternal ratings of children's socioemotional and academic competence when they were six years of age. Statistical analyses revealed a single self-regulation factor for this high neonatal risk sample, and this self-regulation factor mediated associations between early sociodemographic risk and mothers' ratings of academic competence and externalizing problems.

Maternal play behaviors, child negativity, and preterm or low birthweight toddlers' visual-spatial outcomes: testing a differential susceptibility hypothesis.

Objective: We examined the joint roles of child negative emotionality and parenting in the visual-spatial development of toddlers born preterm or with low birthweights (PTLBW).

Method: Neonatal risk data were collected at hospital discharge, observer- and parent-rated child negative emotionality was assessed at 9-months postterm, and mother-initiated task changes and flexibility during play were observed during a dyadic play interaction at 16-months postterm. Abbreviated IQ scores, and verbal/nonverbal and visual-spatial processing data were collected at 24-months postterm.

Do mothers' play behaviors moderate the associations between socioeconomic status and 24-month neurocognitive outcomes of toddlers born preterm or with low birth weight?

Objective: We examined whether neonatal risks and maternal scaffolding (i.e., task changes and flexibility) during a 16-month post-term play interaction moderated the association between socioeconomic status (SES), visual-spatial processing and emerging working memory assessed at 24 months post-term among 75 toddlers born preterm or low birth weight.

Mercy mercy me: social injustice and the prevention of environmental pollutant exposures among ethnic minority and poor children.

Children's lead and pesticide exposures are used as examples to examine social disparities in exposure reduction efforts as well as environmental policies impacting children in poverty and minority children. The review also presents an estimate of the effect of social disparities in lead exposure on standardized test performance. Because including measures of pollutants with potential behavioral effects can alter the observed effects of race/ethnicity, income, and other variables, suggestions are made for including measures of pollutants in longitudinal studies and studies of multiple and cumulative risk.