We examined the course of maternal depressive symptoms and children's attachment security at 36 months in a large sample of mother–child pairs from 10 sites across the country participating in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care (N = 1077). Maternal depressive symptoms predicted higher rates of insecure attachment. Women who reported intermittent symptoms across the first 36 months had preschoolers who were more likely to be classified as insecure C or D; women with chronic symptoms were more likely to have preschoolers who were classified as insecure D. Symptoms reported only during the first 15 months were not associated with elevated rates of later insecurity. After controlling for potentially confounding demographic variables, maternal sensitivity (observed at 6, 15, 24, and 36 months) did not meaningfully account for links between attachment security and patterns of depressive symptoms. However, the course and timing of maternal depressive symptoms interacted with maternal sensitivity to predict insecurity. Women with late, intermittent, or chronic symptoms who were also low in sensitivity were more likely to have preschoolers who were insecure, in contrast to symptomatic women who were high in sensitivity. These data have implications for understanding the combined impact of maternal depressive symptoms and maternal sensitivity on children's socioemotional development.These data were collected under the auspices of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. Susan B. Campbell, Celia A. Brownell, and Susan J. Spieker are investigators in this multisite study. We acknowledge the generous support of the NICHD (Grants HD25420 and HD25447). The study is directed by a Steering Committee and supported by NICHD through a cooperative agreement (U10) that calls for a scientific collaboration between the grantees and the NICHD staff. The authors thank their coinvestigators who worked with them on the design of the larger study, the site coordinators and research assistants who collected the data, and the children and families who continue to participate in this longitudinal study. Our appreciation is also expressed to Dr. Carey Ryan for statistical advice. We also thank the coders who scored the maternal sensitivity and preschool attachment videotapes.

This study investigated the development of attachment relationships in 38 foster infant–caregiver dyads over the first 2 months of placement. We used the Parent Attachment Diary to measure foster infants' daily attachment behaviors, the Adult Attachment Interview to examine foster parents' attachment states of mind, and Ainsworth's Strange Situation to capture attachment classifications. We examined differences in diary scales (secure, avoidant, resistant, and coherence) as they related to age at placement and foster parent attachment, using hierarchical linear modeling and analyses of variance. The results indicated infants with autonomous foster parents and infants placed at younger ages showed higher early and overall levels of secure behavior, less avoidant behavior, and more coherent attachment strategies compared to infants placed with nonautonomous foster parents. Changes in attachment behaviors over time were not predicted by the models; however, there was a significant decrease in the daily coherence of attachment behaviors associated with Strange Situation disorganization. Finally, we found significant concordance between the diary and Strange Situation scales for secure and avoidant behaviors.This research is part of an ongoing study of infants in foster care conducted at the University of Delaware in collaboration with the Baltimore City Department of Social Services and Delaware Department of Family Services. This study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (R0152135) to the second author. We acknowledge the help of Kathleen Albus and Brady Bates with this project. Thanks are also due to Doris Loftin, Beverly Williams, and Gerri Robinson of the Baltimore City Department of Social Services, as well as John Bates, Darlene Lantz, and Kathy Way of the Delaware Division of Children, Youth, and Their Families. Our deepest gratitude is expressed to the caseworkers, foster families, and children at both agencies.

This study examined whether infant joint attention (JA) skills predicted social behaviors in a sample of at-risk preschool children (n = 30) with a history of prenatal exposure to cocaine. JA behaviors were assessed with the Early Social and Communication Scales at 12, 15, and 18 months of age. Three classes of JA were measured: Initiating JA (IJA), Responding to JA (RJA), and Requests. Behavioral outcomes were measured at 36 months and included ratings of disruptive and withdrawn behaviors and social competence. JA behaviors were related to behavioral outcomes after controlling for language and cognitive ability. The functionally distinct uses of JA were differentially related to behavioral outcome. IJA negatively predicted disruptive behaviors, whereas Requests positively predicted disruptive behaviors. Infant RJA negatively predicted withdrawn behaviors and positively predicted social competence. These results are interpreted in the context of competing theories that attempt to explain variability in the expression of JA skills in the second year of life.This research was partially supported by the Florida Department of Education and by a National Research Service Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (1 F32 DA05971-01). Portions of this paper, which was based on a dissertation submitted by the first author at the University of Miami, were presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Albuquerque, NM, April 1999. The authors acknowledge the efforts of Joycelyn Lee for videotape coding and the teachers and staff at the Linda Ray Intervention Center, without whose commitment and efforts this research would not have been possible.

Attachment classifications were obtained from the Strange Situation at 15 months and at 4 years for a sample of 82 low socioeconomic status rural Appalachian children. The rate of secure attachment in infancy was 50.5%, and the majority of insecure infants were disorganized. At 4 years of age 61.2% of children were secure; early secure relationships were likely to be maintained, and about half of the insecure infants changed to a secure classification by 4 years. Overall, there was low but significant stability in attachment at the level of secure/insecure. Comparisons of (a) children who changed from insecure to secure with those who were stable insecure and (b) stable secure children with those who changed from secure to insecure identified contextual, child, and maternal interaction factors associated with attaining secure attachment. Assessments of cognitive and socioemotional competence at 4 years and kindergarten age suggested a protective effect of secure infant attachment but little benefit from secure preschool attachment.This study was supported by Grants MCJ-540615 and R40 MC 00091 from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (Title V, Social Security Act), Health Resources and Services Administration, Department of Health and Human Services and by Grant MH48395 from the National Institute of Mental Health, Department of Health and Human Services. Thanks to the families who participated and the Lincoln Primary Care Center Board of Directors and staff.

Using cross-domain latent growth modeling, we examined trajectories of externalizing and internalizing problems in disadvantaged boys followed from ages 2 to 6 years (N = 303). On average, externalizing problems gradually decreased and internalizing problems gradually increased. However, we found significant variability in individual-level trajectories. Higher levels of externalizing problems were associated with higher levels of internalizing problems; rates of change were also positively correlated across domains. In addition, high levels of externalizing problems predicted rapid increases in internalizing problems. In follow-up analyses involving child and parenting factors, the combination of high negative emotionality, low fearfulness, and high negative maternal control preceded high, nondecreasing externalizing trajectories. The combination of high negative emotionality, high fearfulness, and high negative maternal control preceded high, increasing internalizing trajectories. Taken together, the results indicate both general and specific processes in the development of early externalizing and internalizing problems.This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Grants MH50907 and MH01666 to the second author and NIMH National Research Service Award 1F31MH12226 to the first author. We thank Emily Winslow and Elizabeth Owens for developing the Early Parenting Coding System and the Negative Emotionality Coding System, respectively. We also thank the study participants for teaching us about child development.

Using a short-term longitudinal design, internalizing and externalizing emotions were examined as risk factors for being victimized by peers in early childhood. Regulation, aggression, and withdrawal were also tested as mediators. We found that anger, mediated by aggression and regulation, positively predicted being victimized, although the way in which anger related to victimization risk varied for boys and girls and across time. These findings were robust, particularly for girls, attesting to the importance of externalizing variables as risk factors for young children's victimization. Support for internalizing variables as risk factors for being victimized was weak. The implications of the findings for developmental models connecting symptomatology and victimization are discussed.The authors thank all of the students, children, parents, and teachers who participated in this research. Richard A. Fabes and Nancy Eisenberg were funded in part by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (R01 HH55052 and R01 MH60838) and a Research Scientist Award to Nancy Eisenberg (K05 M801321). Laura D. Hanish was funded by an Arizona State University Faculty Grant-in-Aid. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 108th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, August 2000, Washington, DC.

To examine the effects of early emotional neglect on children's affective development, we assessed children who had experienced institutionalized care prior to adoption into family environments. One task required children to identify photographs of facial expressions of emotion. A second task required children to match facial expressions to an emotional situation. Internationally adopted, postinstitutionalized children had difficulty identifying facial expressions of emotion. In addition, postinstitutionalized children had significant difficulty matching appropriate facial expressions to happy, sad, and fearful scenarios. However, postinstitutionalized children performed as well as comparison children when asked to identify and match angry facial expressions. These results are discussed in terms of the importance of emotional input early in life on later developmental organization.The authors thank Paul Ekman and Linda Camras for making their facial expression stimuli available to us. Dirk Wilker, Ziggy Bialzik, and Craig Rypstat provided invaluable assistance with computer programming and the computerized implementation of the tasks reported in this article. We also appreciate the assistance of Gabrielle Sowle, Marna Brown, Justin Martin, Susan Perlman, Kristi Johnson, Anne Kolan, Erin Eatough, and Sarah Pluck in the collection of these data. Linda Camras provided very helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. These experiments would not be possible without the participation of many children and their families, for whose collaboration we are extremely appreciative. A preliminary version of these data were presented at the 2003 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health to Seth Pollak (MH 68858 and MH 61285). Alison Wismer Fries was also supported by a National Institutes of Health Training Program in Emotion Research (MH 18931).

We examined the relations between emotionality, emotion processing, and aggression in 182 first- and second-grade children. Consistent with Tomkins' and Izard's theoretical predictions, emotionality correlated with emotion processing. In particular, the happiness component of emotionality correlated with emotion attribution accuracy and empathy, the anger component correlated with anger attribution bias and empathy, and the fear component correlated with fear attribution bias. Multiple emotion processing deficits—including emotion attribution accuracy, anger attribution bias, and self-report of empathy—placed children at risk for heightened levels of teacher-reported aggression. Mediational analyses revealed that an emotion processing risk index fit a model of significant partial mediation between happiness and aggression but not between anger and aggression. The results suggest the multifaceted manner in which children's emotion experiences may influence the development of aggressive tendencies.The authors thank the teachers, staff, parents, and students of the Smyrna, DE, school district for their enthusiastic participation in this project and the dedicated work of Fran Haskins and our many research assistants at the University of Delaware.

Patterns of lower autonomic nervous system (ANS) and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis activity have been found in children with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). The aim of the present study was to investigate whether children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) differ from ODD children with (OD/AD) or without comorbid ADHD in ANS and HPA axis activity under baseline and stressful conditions. The effects of stress on cortisol, heart rate (HR), and skin conductance level (SCL) were studied in 95 children (26 normal control [NC] children and 69 child psychiatric patients referred for externalizing behavior problems [15 ODD, 31 OD/AD, and 23 ADHD]). No baseline differences were found in cortisol between the four groups. However, the ODD and OD/AD groups showed a significantly weaker cortisol response to stress compared to the ADHD and NC groups; the ADHD group had a similar cortisol response as the NC group. Within the ODD group this pattern of low cortisol responsivity was most clearly present in the more severely affected inpatients. With respect to HR, the ODD group had a significantly lower HR during baseline and stressful conditions. The higher HR levels in the OD/AD and ADHD groups were likely to be caused by methylphenidate. The externalizing groups had significantly lower SCL levels, and no differences were found between these groups. It was concluded that differences in cortisol responsivity during stress exposure are important in distinguishing within a group of children with externalizing behavior between those with ODD and ADHD.

The hypothesis that prenatal masculinization of the brain increases risk of tic disorders in postnatal life was tested by measuring gender and gender role behavior in 89 children and adults with a clinical diagnosis of Tourette syndrome or obsessive compulsive disorder and 67 healthy, unaffected children and adults. Consistent with this hypothesis, a tic disorder in females was associated with more gender dysphoria, increased masculine play preferences, and a more typically “masculine” pattern of performance on two sex-typed spatial tasks. Males with tic disorders reported increased masculine play preferences, and the strength of these preferences was positively associated with the severity of tic symptoms. In addition, unlike their female counterparts, males with tic disorders showed a relative impairment in mental rotation ability. These behavioral profiles are consistent with those of children who have verifiable elevations in prenatal androgen levels. These findings therefore support the hypothesis that an altered androgen-dependent process of sexual differentiation during prenatal life may contribute to the development of tic-related disorders.This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grants MH01232 (B. P.) and MH59139 (B. P.) and the Suzanne Crosby Murphy endowment in Pediatric Neuropsychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. The authors thank Amy Basile and Shibani Mukerji for their valuable assistance with behavioral testing.

This study investigates how temperament factors are linked to internalizing and externalizing problems in a Dutch population sample of preadolescents (N = 2230). Internalizing and externalizing problems were assessed by the Child Behavior Checklist and the Youth Self-Report and temperament was evaluated by the parent-version of the Revised Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire. Temperament profiles were examined in children with (a) neither internalizing nor externalizing problems, (b) only internalizing problems, (c) only externalizing problems, and (d) both internalizing and externalizing problems. The results suggest clearly diverging temperament profiles for these groups of children, with High-Intensity Pleasure and Shyness (representing the broad dimension of Surgency) steering the conditional probability of internalizing and externalizing problems (direction markers), Frustration mainly being related to maladaptation in general (severity marker), and Fear and Effortful Control being associated with both the severity and the direction of internalizing and externalizing problems, respectively. Girls and boys differed in the distribution across the problem groups, but the associations between temperament and psychopathology were comparable for both genders.This research is part of the Tracking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS). Participating centers of TRAILS include various Departments of the University of Groningen, the Erasmus Medical Center of Rotterdam, the Vrije University of Amsterdam, the University of Nijmegen, and the Trimbos Institute, The Netherlands. TRAILS is financially supported by grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (GB-MW 940-38-011, GB-MAG 480-01-006, ZonMw 100-001-001) and the Ministry of Justice (to F.C.V.) and by the participating centers.

This report examines the predictive validity of sociometric status at age 9–10 to young adult (age 23–24) antisocial behavior, work and school engagement, and arrests using Oregon Youth Study males (N = 206). A variety of analytic strategies included (a) multivariate analyses to examine the variation in adult adaptation as a function of sociometric classification at age 9–10, (b) regression analyses to evaluate the relative contribution of “liked most” and “liked least” peer nominations, and (c) structural equation modeling to predict the young adult outcome constructs from social preference at age 9–10. Contrary to expectation, when controlling for early antisocial behavior and academic skills, boys' social preference scores still predicted young adult outcomes. Longitudinal findings are discussed with respect to the salience of male peer rejection in middle childhood and the social developmental processes that may account for the predictive validity of peer rejection.This project was supported by a grant (MH 37940) from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIH) to Deborah Capaldi, PhD, Oregon Social Learning Center, and by grants (DA 05304 and DA 16110) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH) to the second author (T.J.D.). Thanks to Ann Simas for editing and graphics preparation on this manuscript.

Studies of adults who have been diagnosed with, and treated for, bipolar disorder have shown that these patients exhibit impairment on measures of executive functioning. However, it is unclear whether executive dysfunction precedes the diagnosis of bipolar illness, or develops subsequent to its onset. Moreover, investigators have failed to control for the effects of premorbid attentional problems on cognitive performance in these patients. The present authors explored these questions using data from a longitudinal prospective study of individuals at risk for major mood disorder. Results revealed that 67% of participants who met criteria for bipolar disorder in young adulthood showed impairment on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) when they were assessed during adolescence, as compared with 17% of individuals with no major mood diagnosis, and 19% with unipolar depression. This association between performance on the WCST and bipolar illness was not accounted for by high rates of premorbid attentional disturbance. In fact, among participants with early attentional problems, only those who ultimately developed bipolar disorder exhibited impairment on the WCST. Early attentional problems that preceded unipolar depression or no mood disorder were not associated with executive dysfunction.The findings presented in this paper come from the doctoral dissertation of the first author, which was funded by an NIMH Intramural Research Training Award. The authors are enormously grateful to Roger E. Meyer for his comments on earlier drafts of this paper and to Anne Mayfield, without whom this project would not have been possible. We are deeply indebted to Ann S. Masten, W. Andrew Collins, L. Alan Sroufe, Monica Luciana, and Carrie Borchardt, who provided invaluable guidance throughout all stages of this project, as well as Robert Asarnow, who was an important mentor during the review process. In addition, we acknowledge the contributions of Gail Inoff–Germain, who administered diagnostic interviews and neuropsychological measures at adolescent follow-up; Rula B. Garside, who undertook the painstaking job of establishing interrater reliability; Erika Sundstrom, who devoted many hours to data organization and quality assurance; and Sara Avery Torvik and Patricia Kasdan, whose combined gifts of organization and warmth created a comfortable atmosphere for study participants. Finally, we thank the extraordinary research participants of the NIMH Childrearing Study, who have shown enormous bravery and dedication by sharing with us 23 years of their lives.