Martha Cox - US grants

The aims of this project are: (a) to determine if the birth of a first child affects a couple's relationship, (b) to assess the extent to which a couple's response and adaptation to the birth and rearing of a child is influenced by the nature of the marital relationship, and (c) to understand the marital relationship as a protective factor in the development of parent-child relationships and in the development of socio-emotional competence and adaptive ability in children. The way in which the birth and rearing of a child affects and is affected by the marital relationship will be examined as part of an on-going prospective, longitudinal study of the relationship between social support and the rearing of a child at-risk for poor developmental outcome. In this on-going study, 500-600 families are being enlisted a year for 3 years. These families will be followed from pregnancy to 6-months after birth in order to identify and follow through two years a cohort (which has been studied prenatally) of 210 18- to 40-year-old women who have children with various risk factors for poor developmental outcome. The families with infants who do not have risk factors for poor developmental outcome will be dropped at 6 months in this study. The study proposed here would take advantage of this already- recruited sample of families with infants who do not have risk factors for poor developmental outcome (and who would be dropped form the study at 6 months after birth) to add another major line of inquiry concerning the mutual effects in the family of the marital and parent-child relationships. The marriages of 120 couples experiencing a first birth will be extensively investigated prenatally and at 3, 12, and 24 months after birth, parent- child relationships will be studied at 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24 months after birth, and socio-emotional competence and adaptation in children will be studied at 12 and 24 months. The data will be analyzed using a mediational model that temporally orders individual, marital, parental, parent-child and child variables in a manner that is predicted to influence a family's reactions to the birth and rearing of a first child. By studying the early family in this way, we seek to understand factors that protect children from behavioral disturbance. Though clinical theories in family therapy link marital problems and child disturbance, little research has followed the marital dyad through the transition to parenthood to ask how different marital systems adapt to the child and what the implications are of that adaptation for parent-child relationships and for the development of socio- emotional competence and adaptive behavior in the child. Failure to reach early markers of socio-emotional competence has been shown in earlier studies to have mental health implications for children's later socio- emotional functioning. The importance of this research for mental health issues is clear, not only with regard to child disturbance, but also with regard to parental functioning and the parental marriage.

Support is requested for the collaborative work of the Research Consortium on Family Risk and Resilience. The Consortium is composed of eleven senior scientists, each of whom has an active, funded program of longitudinal family research on biological, psychological, social, or social-structural factors involved in the developmental course of mental health or illness. The Consortium has been organized, specifically, to promote intellectual exchange and collaborative research on: 1) Family and individual risk, resilience, protective mechanisms, and vulnerabilities to stress that are conceptualized in terms of the interplay among life-course developmental processes at multiple levels of analysis; 2) A family approach to the study of risk and resilience processes which can facilitate examination of multiple levels of influence; 3) Comparative studies of risk and resilience; 4) New advances in research and statistical methodology that need to be incorporated into family risk and resiliency research; and 5) The extension of basic studies of risk and resilience processes by experimental tests using prevention and intervention studies. The Consortium plans four coordinate programs to address the aims outlined above: 1) regular meetings and communication to do the scientific business of the Consortium including planning collaborations among Consortium members; 2) a multisite, postdoctoral training program in family risk and resilience research (to be funded through a separate training grant); 3) an annual Summer Institute, open to the family research field, centering on advances in family risk and resilience research (new findings, methodologies, and analyses) and offering a forum for intellectual exchange and the formation of collaborations; and 4) regular communications with other researchers and organizations. Products of the Consortium will include: 1) review papers and technical reports from its regular meetings; 2) collaborative research projects; 3) improved research on family risk and resilience resulting from the participation of many family researchers in the Summer Institutes; 4) a group of well- trained postdoctoral fellows; and 5) an annually published volume based on the Summer Institute.

DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from applicant's description) The goal of Phase III of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care is to extend a collaborative, prospective, longitudinal study of a cohort of 1103 children and their families, first enrolled at one month of age and studied intensively through first grade (age 7) in Phases I and II of this cooperative agreement. These participants will be studied through middle childhood (fifth grade) in order to investigate how important contexts contribute to trajectories of development from birth through middle childhood within the broader social ecology of work and family. The design of Phase III involves intensive study of the children and their parents at third and fifth grades (home visits, school observations, and laboratory assessments) as well as regularly scheduled (at least one per year) phone-call interviews with the children and mothers. In addition, questionnaires will be gathered from teachers in second through fifth grades. Structural and process features of key contexts (home/family, school, out-of- school settings, neighborhood/community, parents' work, and socioeconomic/cultural niches) will be examined in relation to trajectories in three principal domains of child development (achievement/cognition, social/emotional, and health), as well as the domain of parental well-being. Through multivariate modeling of longitudinal relations among features of multiple contexts and developmental trajectories, work in Phase III will be organized by four central research issues: a) the interplay between early and concurrent experience in varied contexts and developmental trajectories from birth through middle childhood; b) the extent to which different processes account for development trajectories across children and/or families that differ with regard to cultural, social, or economic niche; c) the ways in which experiences in familial and extrafamilial contexts contribute to risk and resilience; and d) the relations between parents' work and family life and the consequences of work-family relations for parents' well-being and that of their children.

ABSTRACT

NORTH CAROLINA CHILD DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH COLLABORATIVE

Martha J. Cox, Principal Investigator
J. Steven Reznick, Co-Principal Investigator

The North Carolina Child Development Research Collaborative (CDRC) proposed here builds upon ongoing multidisciplinary activities across departments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and neighboring institutions of Duke, University of North Carolina at Greensboro and North Carolina State. Investigators from disparate areas of developmental inquiry-from behavioral genetics and developmental neuroscience to life-course sociology, anthropology, public health, nursing, social work, education and developmental psychology-will participate in the research and training at the CDRC. The CDRC's efforts are informed by an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the development of youth that includes investigation of cultural and societal factors studied by anthropologist and sociologists to the neural and genetic levels studied by biologists and neuroscientists. The work of the CDRC will transcend a "main effect" model of development that sees each influence as an independent contribution and will embrace a model in which influences from various levels (the community, the family, neural and genetic factors etc.) are seen as working together.
The CDRC will increase the capacity of faculty and students to conduct interdisciplinary research. This will be accomplished by launching a new longitudinal, collaborative research study focusing on early childhood. From birth to school entry, children show remarkable linguistic, intellectual, emotional and social change while going through successive transitions between social contexts such as from family to day care or nursery school, annual changes from one peer group to another, and later changes from preschool to kindergarten. This study will tap levels of analysis relevant for understanding early development, extending beyond the individual and dyad to include assessments of biological functioning, cognitive competence, personality and emotion, social relationships, neighborhood, community, and culture in which persons and interactions are embedded. Beginning in the first year of life, we will track these multiple levels of analysis during periods of transition to elucidate both the constraints posed by the child's environment as well as illustrating the ability of the child to adapt to new environments and conditions. A representative sample of 200 children born during a 3-month period will be recruited into the study from birth records in Durham, North Carolina. Durham is a mid-size city with typical characteristics of cities around the United States: a diverse population in terms of family ethnicity, income, and education; a declining city center with large pockets of poverty and limited employment opportunities; and wide variation in the quality of child care and school settings. Durham has an almost equal representation of African-American and Euro-American families and a rapidly increasing Hispanic population. Moreover, Durham has a large African-American middle class population, thus making it possible to study ethnicity disentangled from socioeconomic status among both African-American and Euro-American groups. Children will be tested initially within a 2-week period on either side of their first birthday and followed longitudinally through their fourth birthday. Additional assessments will be conducted at the second and third birthday and midway between birthdays (i.e., at 18, 30, and 42 months).
Integrated working groups of researchers will implement multiple levels of measurement. Six working groups focus on: biological processes; temperament and emotional regulation; memory, language, and literacy; peer relations as contexts; family and intergenerational relationships; child care, community, and culture. A seventh working group provides expertise on quantitative approaches to longitudinal analyses.
The CDRC will also initiate and support other linked endeavors including: 1) conducting workshops, seminars and course development to increase cross-disciplinary knowledge, 2) developing new methods for interdisciplinary research, and 3) training a diverse cadre of young scholars who are equipped to pursue collaborative interdisciplinary research.

DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from applicant's description) The goal of Phase III of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care is to extend a collaborative, prospective, longitudinal study of a cohort of 1103 children and their families, first enrolled at one month of age and studied intensively through first grade (age 7) in Phases I and II of this cooperative agreement. These participants will be studied through middle childhood (fifth grade) in order to investigate how important contexts contribute to trajectories of development from birth through middle childhood within the broader social ecology of work and family. The design of Phase III involves intensive study of the children and their parents at third and fifth grades (home visits, school observations, and laboratory assessments) as well as regularly scheduled (at least one per year) phone-call interviews with the children and mothers. In addition, questionnaires will be gathered from teachers in second through fifth grades. Structural and process features of key contexts (home/family, school, out-of- school settings, neighborhood/community, parents' work, and socioeconomic/cultural niches) will be examined in relation to trajectories in three principal domains of child development (achievement/cognition, social/emotional, and health), as well as the domain of parental well-being. Through multivariate modeling of longitudinal relations among features of multiple contexts and developmental trajectories, work in Phase III will be organized by four central research issues: a) the interplay between early and concurrent experience in varied contexts and developmental trajectories from birth through middle childhood; b) the extent to which different processes account for development trajectories across children and/or families that differ with regard to cultural, social, or economic niche; c) the ways in which experiences in familial and extrafamilial contexts contribute to risk and resilience; and d) the relations between parents' work and family life and the consequences of work-family relations for parents' well-being and that of their children.

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): [unreadable] The Carolina Consortium on Human Development seeks to train productive researchers and creative [unreadable] scientists in an interdisciplinary program that is unique in its focus and breadth. This program is organized and administered across traditional institutional and discipline boundaries. The 73 members of the training faculty represent 10 different departments located in six cooperating universities and colleges (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina Central University, Duke University, Meredith College, North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro). This arrangement permits the Consortium to bring together an unusually strong group of developmental scientists. Though they are drawn from different disciplines and represent different perspectives, the members of the training faculty share a commitment to the rigorous study of developmental processes. The goals are two-fold: (a) to understand the social/biological bases of human behavior across the life course and across generations, and (b) to conduct research relevant to the enhancement of competencies and the prevention of behavioral disorders among children, youth, and families. We focus upon the longitudinal and intergenerational study of persons and families in changing social contexts. [unreadable] [unreadable] Persons at the postdoctoral level are accepted for a two-year program of intensive research training. [unreadable] Their program is individualized and supervised by an Advisory Committee comprised of members selected from the training faculty. The trainees will complete studies in two different laboratories during their tenure, and they will participate in advanced proseminars in developmental methodology, theory, and preventive intervention. Predoctoral trainees must be registered in a doctoral program and have completed their basic departmental course requirements prior to entering the training program. Prerequisites include a minimum number of cross-listed courses in advanced statistics and research design. All trainees will participate in the advanced proseminars, in brief research workshops, and in supervised research in the laboratory of one of the Consortium faculty and/or in ongoing projects of the Center for Developmental Science. [unreadable] [unreadable] Five postdoctoral and five predoctoral stipends are requested. [unreadable] [unreadable]

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is an application to extend the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) into its fourth phase. The SECCYD is a collaborative, prospective, longitudinal study of a cohort of 1,073 adolescents and their families, first enrolled at one month of age and studied intensively through sixth grade in Phase lll of this cooperative agreement. The primary study aims of Phase IV are (1) to investigate how earlier functioning and experiences, in concert with contextual and maturational factors in adolescence, influence social relationships, health, adjustment, and intellectual and academic development during middle adolescence; and (2) to extend into middle adolescence an intensive and extensive study of patterns of health and human development from infancy onward, which can be used by the broader scientific community to study a wide range of basic and applied questions. Primary data collection in Phase IV occurs when the adolescents are 15 years old, and again, at 16. At 15, a home visit occurs in which parent-adolescent interactions are videotaped and the adolescents and their parents (or parental figures) complete questionnaires and structured interviews. During lab visits at ages 15 and 16, adolescents' achievement is assessed and adolescents complete self-report measures. The age 15 data collection also includes an extensive assessment of the adolescent's cognitive functioning, cortisol reactivity, and physical activity. In addition, yearly examinations of pubertal status and health are conducted. Finally school personnel complete questionnaires and adolescents' school transcripts are coded at the end of middle school and Grade 10. These data, in concert with data from earlier Phases, will be used to test four models of developmental processes. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]

From many sectors of our society, concerns have been raised about the poor academic achievement of large numbers of American children. Those children who struggle in the first few years of formal schooling are more likely than their high-achieving peers to exhibit academic difficulties in subsequent years. They are also at increased risk for a range of emotional and behavioral problems that are costly to society. Because the PIs have little understanding of why some children do well and others do not, this project was designed to addresses critical questions concerning the ways in which the transition to early formal schooling confers advantage on some children and disadvantage on others. From our perspective, progress in understanding the multiple pathways that may be taken by individual children requires a multi-level approach ? from genes to environments ? for characterizing development. Such a multidisciplinary approach is at the core of the program of Integrative Research Activities for Developmental Science (IRADS) research that is to be carried out by collaborators associated with the Center for Developmental Science (CDS).

The transition to school presents the developing child with a unique set of social, cognitive, and emotional challenges, each of which carries with it increased demands for self control. In the context of the classroom, children not only interact with new authority figures and classmates, but they also engage in novel rule-based activities and encounter raised expectations for performance. Central to the PIs exploration of these critical challenges to the child is an investigation that builds upon the success of a unique longitudinal and mixed method study that was launched in 2002 with a broad sample of 200 infants and their families. The PIs unusual cohort ? composed of equal numbers of African Americans and European Americans, with each group including families across a wide socioeconomic spectrum ? was studied from birth through the preschool years. A complex protocol was employed to gather information concerning temperament and emotional regulation; cognitive processes and executive functioning; family and peer relationships; social, child-care, and community influences; and biological and genetic processes.
Given this rich foundation, the plan is to follow the sample over the next five years, as the children navigate the transition to school. Assessments of the children, families, and school contexts will be carried out when the children are in Kindergarten and Grades 1, 2, and 3. In addition, the data from this study will be augmented by genetic information that we will obtain from participants in two additional longitudinal projects that are being conducted currently by CDS faculty members. The PIs efforts are informed fully by the exciting findings that the PIs have obtained to date and lead the PIs to specify unique hypotheses that span levels of analysis. As examples, consider the following two hypotheses, one that reflects the effects of Gene X Environment co-actions on development, and one that explores the implications of early emotion regulation and cognitive processes for the transition to school.

-Children with the 7-repeat allele and the T.7 hapoltype are at an advantage with regard to focused attention, an advantage that will translate into better emotion regulation and/or cognitive performance and school achievement. Positive parenting and/or a structured classroom setting will be protective factors for children who do not have this genetic advantage. The disadvantages of poor classroom and/or home environment will be even more pronounced in children who also lack this genetic variation

-Children who are highly reactive temperamentally as preschoolers will experience more difficulty with the transition to formal schooling than will less reactive children, but this relation will be moderated by cognitive factors (e.g., high levels of working memory, skills in phonic awareness), the nature of the classroom environment, and emotional regulation.
By using tracking children as they make the transition to school with a multilevel genes-to-environments assessment protocol, it will be possible to elucidate both the plasticity of adaptation and development and the impact of contextual constraints. In addition, the project provides an unusual collaborative context for the professional development of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young faculty members.

Poverty is known to be associated with stress and increased risk for poor child outcomes in the transition to school. In the context of poverty, family factors (e.g., disrupted parent-child relationships, marital discord, abusive and rejecting parenting) play important roles as both risk and protective factors given the stressful life conditions associated with poverty. At present most research on the role of family factors has conducted in urban areas and there is a paucity of knowledge regarding the family factors associated with chjld outcomes in rural areas. Further, poverty is likely to disrupt family processes that are critical for establishing early childhood competencies associated both with cognitive and social-emotional development and success in school. To address the limitations of prior work, this competing continuation of Project III will test a developmental systems model of family process links to child social, emotional, and academic competencies in a population-based sample of 1,292 children and families in predominantly low-income and rural communities in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Measures of observed parent-child, whole family, and reported marital aggression and violence collected in the first phase of the project at child ages 6, 15, 24, and 36 months and continued in the second phase at 60 months and first grade will be related to developmental trajectories of social, emotional, and academic competence measured from 36 months through 2nd grade. Various hypothesized pathways through parental distress and support processes will be tested. A unique feature of the program project will be the ability to test models for African-American as well as Euro-American families at various levels of income, with varying family structures, and embedded in different neighborhood contexts in order to understand the extent to which different family processes may operate differently among cultural subgroups, and in different family structures and neighborhood contexts. We will also examine how well-managed supportive classrooms can alter children's academic and social competence for children from high risk families, as well as'the extent to which supportive families may buffer the influence of poorly managed, unsupportive classrooms. We also pose questions regarding the extent to which early temperament and self-regulation qualities in the child may put some children at greater risk for poor social, cognitive and academic outcomes in poorly managed homes and classrooms. By combining our assessments of family processes with measurements from Project I (child characteristics) and Project II (child language and classroom contexts), we can address unique and critical questions about children's development in rural poor areas.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Carolina Consortium on Human Development (CCHD), based at the Center for Developmental Science (CDS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, seeks to train productive researchers and creative scientists in an interdisciplinary program that is unique in its focus and breadth. This program is organized and administered across traditional institutional and discipline boundaries: the 95 members of the Mentor training faculty come from over 20 different academic units that are based at six cooperating universities and colleges (Duke University, Meredith College, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). Such an arrangement permits the CCHD to bring together a strong and diverse group of scientists who share a commitment to the interdisciplinary study of developmental processes. Trainees come to our program from various backgrounds to become interdisciplinary developmental scientists. Unique training opportunities center around four basic aims: (1) exploring the theoretical and methodological foundations of developmental science;(2) providing direct experience in longitudinal research;(3) applying developmental science to real- world issues;and (4) facilitating collaborative training opportunities that extend beyond the usual boundaries of disciplines, departments, and institutions. These aims are realized through (1) research opportunities with at least two different laboratories representing related but diverse approaches to issues of development;(2) weekly CCHD Proseminar meetings of our trainees and faculty with distinguished scholars on issues in developmental science;(3) workshops and symposia on targeted issues in developmental science;(4) collaborative research opportunities with Mentor faculty members;(5) experience with all aspects of longitudinal research, from conceptualization to publication;and (6) forums for discussing the application of developmental science to real-world issues. The program accepts postdoctoral Fellows for a 2-year fellowship and predoctoral Fellows for a 1-year fellowship. A vigorous recruitment effort is made to identify highly talented and motivated candidates from diverse disciplines and backgrounds. Predoctoral trainees must be registered in a doctoral program and have completed their basic departmental course requirements prior to entering the one-year predoctoral training program. Five postdoctoral and five predoctoral stipends are requested. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The Carolina Consortium on Human Development equips trainees to focus on basic issues concerning human development as well as questions of direct national concern about environments, programs, policies, and practices important for the wellbeing of our nation's children, youth, and families.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Measuring Attachment Representations in Rural and Poor African American Children. The development of the person is considered by many behavioral scientists to involve a dynamic process whereby self-regulatory structures and functions grow from the collaborative interplay between the developing child and the environment. The child and environment are seen from this perspective as mutually transformative over time as earlier patterns of adaptation are transformed by environmental change while environmental features are represented differently by individuals and thus have different meaning and influence. This conceptualization of development is important in guiding research aimed at understanding the child's adaptation to new settings and challenges during key developmental transitions such as the transition to formal schooling. In the transition to school the child encounters new authority figures, standards of performance, and activities and rules in the formal classroom setting, as well as engages in a wide variety of new social interactions with peers and adults. The way in which the child understands and represents the emotion and behaviors of others has been related to children's relationships with their peers and teachers and to broad indicators of school success. Research on this topic highlights the importance of attachment relationships on later functioning, an effect considered by many to be dependent on the child's translation of interaction patterns into relationship representations. Despite the potential importance of these representations, they are rarely studied as part of the adaptation that children make to early schooling and are particularly understudied among children who are at high risk for school failure because of rural, low income, and minority status. One of the barriers to study of this phenomenon is the lack of validation of a measure of attachment representation for rural, low-income, African American children at early school age. In this application we seek support for exploring the Manchester Child Attachment Story Tasks (MCAST) as a valid and reliable measure of attachment representation for rural, low-income African American kindergarten children. We also seek to explore whether attachment representations in rural, low-income African American children serve to mediate the link between maternal care and the child's adaptation to formal schooling. To accomplish this aim, we will use subjects from an ongoing longitudinal study, the Family Life Project (FLP), adding measurement funded by this application to already collected information. This study is ideally suited to explore our questions in a cost-efficient manner. The FLP is a program project in which an epidemiological sample of over 1200 children and their families were enlisted in 6 rural counties in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. We will randomly draw a subsample of 200 North Carolina children from low income, African American families. This sample size gives us good power to explore questions regarding attachment representations using the MCAST. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The current project addresses specific issues related to how children internalize relationships with their primary caregivers and then potentially use those representations to guide how they interact and form new relationships with teachers and peers during the transition to school. These processes may be particularly informative regarding how early familial experience continue to influence socioemotional development and functioning outside of the family environment.