Early bedtime routines and behavioral outcomes among children from low-income families: Mediating role of emotion regulation.

The establishment of early bedtime routine is essential for children's emotion and behavioral outcomes. Less is known, however, about the longitudinal effects and mechanisms predicting behavioral outcomes through early bedtime routine and emotion regulation in school-age children from low-income families. Thus, the present study examined emotion regulation at age three as a potential mediator in the longitudinal links between early bedtime routine and behavioral outcomes among racially diverse school age children from low-income families.

Early adverse childhood experiences and preschoolers' attentional regulation: A latent class analysis.

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) profoundly disrupt preschoolers' attentional regulation development. Different patterns of ACEs may be associated with different attentional regulation outcomes.

Objective: Drawing from developmental systems theory and attachment theory, this study aimed to identify distinct patterns of early ACEs at age three and examined the associations of these patterns with preschoolers' attentional regulation at age five.

Father involvement, couple relationship quality, and maternal Postpartum Depression: the role of ethnicity among low-income families.

Objectives: Maternal postpartum depression (PPD) has been recognized as a serious and wide-spread mental health disorder that has long-term negative impacts on children's cognitive, social, and emotional development. This study extends prior research by examining the associations among predictors of PPD, including two different facets of father involvement and couple relationship quality, with a focus on testing these pathways across ethnic groups.

Method: This study analyzed data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) including mothers' baseline interviews and one-year follow-up data sets (n = 2,794).

Emotional Reactivity and Regulation in Preschool-Age Children Who Do and Do Not Stutter: Evidence From Autonomic Nervous System Measures.

This experimental cross-sectional research study examined the emotional reactivity and emotion regulation in preschool-age children who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS) by assessing their psychophysiological response during rest and while viewing pictures from the International Affective Picture System (Lang et al., 2008). Participants were 18 CWS (16 boys and two girls; mean age 4 years, 5 months) and 18 age- and gender-matched CWNS.

School-based yoga intervention increases adolescent resilience: a pilot trial.

Youth often experience stressors leading to negative long-term outcomes. Enhancing social-emotional attributes is important to foster resiliency to face these challenges. Yoga may enhance social-emotional resiliency among youth.

The Role of Behavioral Inhibition for Conversational Speech and Language Characteristics of Preschool-Age Children Who Stutter.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate whether preschool-age children who stutter (CWS) were more likely to exhibit a temperamental trait of behavioral inhibition (BI), a correlate of shyness, than children who do not stutter (CWNS) and whether this temperamental trait affected preschool-age children's speech fluency and language complexity during a conversation with an unfamiliar adult. Method Sixty-eight preschool-age children (31 CWS, 37 CWNS) participated. The degree of BI was assessed by measuring the latency to their sixth spontaneous comment and the number of all spontaneous comments during a conversation with an unfamiliar examiner (following Kagan et al.

Links between motor control and classroom behaviors: Moderation by low birth weight.

It is unclear from past research on effortful control whether one of its components, motor control, independently contributes to adaptive classroom behaviors. The goal of this study was to identify associations between early motor control, measured by the walk-a-line task at age 3, and teacher-reported learning-related behaviors (approaches to learning and attention problems) and behavior problems in kindergarten classrooms. Models tested whether children who were vulnerable to poorer learning behaviors and more behavior problems due to having been born low birth weight benefited more, less, or the same as other children from better motor control.

The Maternal Description of Child (MDoC): A New Audiotaped Measure of Maternal Affect.

We report on a new measure of maternal affect from an ongoing multi-site birth cohort study with primarily low-income families, the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. At child age of 5 years, mothers were asked to describe their child in a short, semi-structured home interview. One innovation of this measure - called the Maternal Description of Child (MDoC) - is that it captured maternal affect via audiotape rather than videotape.

The Implications of Early Attentional Regulation for School Success among Low-Income Children.

This study examined the longitudinal associations between attentional regulation in preschool and children's school success in later elementary school within an at-risk sample (N = 2,595). Specifically, two facets of attention (focused attention and lack of impulsivity) at age 5 were explored as independent predictors of children's achievement and behavioral competence at age 9. Overall, the pattern of results indicates specificity between the facets of attention and school success, such that focused attention was predictive of achievement outcomes while impulsivity was predictive of behavioral outcomes.

Sustained Attention at Age 5 Predicts Attention-Related Problems at Age 9.

This study tested whether two aspects of sustained attention (focused attention and lack of impulsivity) measured at child age 5 predicted attention problems reported by mothers and teachers at age 9. Because lack of impulsivity reflects the executive control network, and ADHD is commonly characterized as a deficit in executive function, it was expected to have more predictive power than focused attention. Data were drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study.

Specifying the Links Between Household Chaos and Preschool Children's Development.

Household chaos has been linked to poorer cognitive, behavioral, and self-regulatory outcomes in young children, but the mechanisms responsible remain largely unknown. Using a diverse sample of families in Chicago, the present study tests for the independent contributions made by five indicators of household chaos: noise, crowding, family instability, lack of routine, and television usually on. Chaos was measured at age 2; outcomes measured at age 5 tap receptive vocabulary, attention and behavior problems, and effortful control.

Associations among family environment, sustained attention, and school readiness for low-income children.

In this study, we examined the developmental pathways from children's family environment to school readiness within a low-income sample (N = 1,046), with a specific focus on the role of sustained attention. Six distinct factors of the family environment representing maternal parenting behaviors, the physical home environment, and maternal mental health at 3 years of age were explored as independent predictors of children's observed sustained attention as well as cognitive and behavioral outcomes at 5 years of age. Children were grouped by poverty status (poor vs.

Associations among False-belief Understanding, Executive Function, and Social Competence: A Longitudinal Analysis.

A growing number of studies demonstrate associations among false-belief understanding (FBU), executive function (EF), and social competence. This study extends previous studies by exploring longitudinal associations among FBU and its correlates within a low-income sample of preschoolers attending Head Start. Sixty-eight children (time 1 mean age = 5 years 2 months) were assessed over their preschool and kindergarten years.

Associations among feeding behaviors during infancy and child illness at two years.

Objectives: To explore the different combinations of early feeding practices and their association with child illness in toddlerhood (i.e., asthma, respiratory infections, gastrointestinal infections, and ear infections).

Relating effortful control, executive function, and false belief understanding to emerging math and literacy ability in kindergarten.

This study examined the role of self-regulation in emerging academic ability in one hundred and forty-one 3- to 5-year-old children from low-income homes. Measures of effortful control, false belief understanding, and the inhibitory control and attention-shifting aspects of executive function in preschool were related to measures of math and literacy ability in kindergarten. Results indicated that the various aspects of child self-regulation accounted for unique variance in the academic outcomes independent of general intelligence and that the inhibitory control aspect of executive function was a prominent correlate of both early math and reading ability.