Objectives:
The present study aimed to explore the effect of risk factors associated with the COVID-19 outbreak experience on parents' and children's well-being.
Methods:
Parents of children aged ...between 2- and 14-years-old completed an online survey reporting their home environment conditions, any relation they had to the pandemic consequences, their difficulties experienced due to the quarantine, their perception of individual and parent-child dyadic stress, and their children's emotional and behavioral problems.
Results:
Results showed that the perception of the difficulty of quarantine is a crucial factor that undermines both parents' and children's well-being. Quarantine's impact on children's behavioral and emotional problems is mediated by parent's individual and dyadic stress, with a stronger effect from the latter. Parents who reported more difficulties in dealing with quarantine show more stress. This, in turn, increases the children's problems. Living in a more at-risk area, the quality of the home environment, or the relation they have with the pandemic consequences, do not have an effect on families' well-being.
Conclusions:
Dealing with quarantine is a particularly stressful experience for parents who must balance personal life, work, and raising children, being left alone without other resources. This situation puts parents at a higher risk of experiencing distress, potentially impairing their ability to be supportive caregivers. The lack of support these children receive in such a difficult moment may be the reason for their more pronounced psychological symptoms. Policies should take into consideration the implications of the lockdown for families' mental health, and supportive interventions for the immediate and for the future should be promoted.
Dellagiulia A, Lionetti F, Fasolo M, Verderame C, Sperati A, Alessandri G. Early impact of COVID-19 lockdown on children’s sleep: a 4-week longitudinal study.
J Clin Sleep Med
. 2020;16(9):1639–1640.
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•SPS captures sensitivity to environment in a heritable, evolutionary-conserved trait, associated with increased information processing in the brain.•SPS moderates sensitivity to ...environments in a for-better-and-for-worse fashion.•Interaction with negative experiences, increases risk for psychopathology.•Interaction with positive experiences (including interventions), increases positive outcomes.•Objective assessment, mechanistic understanding and evidence-based interventions for high scoring individuals on SPS need to be improved.
Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) is a common, heritable and evolutionarily conserved trait describing inter-individual differences in sensitivity to both negative and positive environments. Despite societal interest in SPS, scientific knowledge is lagging behind. Here, we critically discuss how SPS relates to other theories, how to measure SPS, whether SPS is a continuous vs categorical trait, its relation to other temperament and personality traits, the underlying aetiology and neurobiological mechanisms, and relations to both typical and atypical development, including mental and sensory disorders. Drawing on the diverse expertise of the authors, we set an agenda for future research to stimulate the field. We conclude that SPS increases risk for stress-related problems in response to negative environments, but also provides greater benefit from positive and supportive experiences. The field requires more reliable and objective assessment of SPS, and deeper understanding of its mechanisms to differentiate it from other traits. Future research needs to target prevention of adverse effects associated with SPS, and exploitation of its positive potential to improve well-being and mental health.
Abstract In this article we review the literature on attachment patterns in institutionalized children and then perform a meta-analysis on data from 10 attachment studies involving 399 children in ...institutional settings. We computed the overall attachment distribution of secure, insecure, and disorganized rates and explored the effect of a set of moderating variables (i.e., country of institutionalization, attachment assessment procedure, age at entry, and age at assessment). To overcome bias related to the small number of studies, we conducted both classical and Bayesian meta-analysis and obtained comparable results. Distribution of children's attachment patterns was: 18% secure, 28% insecure, and 54% disorganized/cannot classify. Compared to their family-reared peers, children living in an institution were found to be at greater risk for insecure and disorganized attachment, with a similar medium effect size for both distributions ( d = 0.77 and d = 0.76, respectively). The following moderating variables were associated with insecure attachment: representational assessment procedures ( d = 0.63) and Eastern European countries of origin ( d = 1.13). Moderators for disorganized attachment were: Eastern European countries of origin ( d = 1.12), age at institution entry before the first birthday ( d = 0.93), and age at assessment under three years of age ( d = 0.91). Implications for child development and policies are discussed.
According to empirical studies and recent theories, people differ substantially in their reactivity or sensitivity to environmental influences with some being generally more affected than others. ...More sensitive individuals have been described as orchids and less-sensitive ones as dandelions. Applying a data-driven approach, we explored the existence of sensitivity groups in a sample of 906 adults who completed the highly sensitive person (HSP) scale. According to factor analyses, the HSP scale reflects a bifactor model with a general sensitivity factor. In contrast to prevailing theories, latent class analyses consistently suggested the existence of three rather than two groups. While we were able to identify a highly sensitive (orchids, 31%) and a low-sensitive group (dandelions, 29%), we also detected a third group (40%) characterised by medium sensitivity, which we refer to as tulips in keeping with the flower metaphor. Preliminary cut-off scores for all three groups are provided. In order to characterise the different sensitivity groups, we investigated group differences regarding the Big Five personality traits, as well as experimentally assessed emotional reactivity in an additional independent sample. According to these follow-up analyses, the three groups differed in neuroticism, extraversion and emotional reactivity to positive mood induction with orchids scoring significantly higher in neuroticism and emotional reactivity and lower in extraversion than the other two groups (dandelions also differed significantly from tulips). Findings suggest that environmental sensitivity is a continuous and normally distributed trait but that people fall into three distinct sensitive groups along a sensitivity continuum.
Parenting interventions represent a means for experimentally inquiring socio‐emotional change of post‐institutionalized children after adoption. We used this approach in a three time point RCT study ...involving 83 post‐institutionalized children (Mage = 33.5 months, SD = 17.1) and their adoptive mothers (Mage = 42.6, SD = 3.9), attending either the Video‐Feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting in adoption and foster care or a dummy intervention. Controlling for gender and age at adoption, children showed a significant change in their socio‐emotional adjustment in the specific variables inquired—that is, emotional availability‐EA, and behavioral problems—after intervention attendance. Mediation and moderated mediation models showed that maternal EA was a main factor affecting children’s EA and externalizing behavioral problems, with a key moderating role played by children’s temperament; children with high scores on temperamental negative affect benefitted most from their mothers’ increase in EA.
Some children are more affected than others by their upbringing due to their increased sensitivity to the environment. More sensitive children are at heightened risk for the development of ...internalizing problems, particularly when experiencing unsupportive parenting. However, little is known about how the interplay between children’s sensitivity and parenting leads to higher levels of depressive symptoms. In the current study, we investigated the interaction between early parenting and children’s sensitivity on levels of depressive symptomatology in middle childhood, exploring the role of rumination as a possible mediator in a community sample. Participants included 196 USA resident families, from a middle class and mostly European–American background, and their healthy children, followed up from age 3 until 9 and 12 years. Environmental sensitivity was assessed observationally when children were 3 years old. Parenting style was based on parent-report at the age of 3 years. When children were nine, they completed questionnaires on rumination and depressive symptoms (repeated at 12 years). Analyses were run applying a Bayesian approach. Children’s sensitivity interacted with permissive parenting in predicting rumination at age 9. Rumination, in turn, was associated with depressive symptoms at age 9 and, to a lesser extent, at age 12. No relevant interactions emerged for authoritative and authoritarian parenting. Sensitive children may be at heightened risk for internalizing problems when exposed to a permissive parenting style. Permissive parenting was associated with increased ruminative coping strategies in sensitive children which, in turn, predicted higher levels of depression. Hence, rumination emerged as an important cognitive risk factor for the development of depressive symptoms in sensitive children.
This cross-sectional study explored whether the association between perceived family support and child well-being was moderated by the individual trait of Environmental Sensitivity (the ability to ...register, process, and respond to stimuli) and cardiac vagal tone (CVT, an index of self-regulation) in a sample of children living in socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Participating children (N = 131, Mage = 7.20 years, 47% boys) were individually interviewed about the support received within the family as well as their physical and emotional well-being. Children’s sensitivity was assessed via a series of behavioral tasks, and CVT was recorded at rest. Hierarchical cluster analysis on the behavioral items yielded three sensitivity groups: “Low sensitive” (43%), “Moderately sensitive” (33%), and “Highly sensitive” (24%). The three groups of children did not differ in baseline CVT. However, linear regression analyses revealed that at low and average levels of family support, highly sensitive children with higher resting CVT reported better well-being than those with low resting CVT, whereas no effect was observed among children in the other two groups. In the context of high family support, children reported high levels of well-being irrespective of their levels of vagal activity or sensitivity. The findings suggest that among low SES families, when children experience a poorly supportive family environment and are highly sensitive to negative experiences, having a higher resting CVT may confer an advantage in terms of well-being. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Adolescents differ in their degree of
Environmental Sensitivity
, that is, the ability to perceive and process information about their environment. The present study aimed to investigate the ...psychometric properties of the Highly Sensitive Child scale (HSC), a self-report measure of
Environmental Sensitivity
, in two Belgian and UK samples with a total of 3056 adolescents. First, the factor structure, internal consistency, dimensionality, and construct validity of the HSC scale were examined. Second, measurement invariance of the HSC scale across developmental stage, gender, and country was tested. Results supported a bifactor model with a general sensitivity factor and three group factors: Ease of Excitation (EOE), Low Sensory Threshold (LST), and Aesthetic Sensitivity (AES). Cronbach’s alpha and McDonalds’s (hierarchical) omega indicated that the HSC scale is a reliable measure of
Environmental Sensitivity
, except for AES. Furthermore, AES was associated with different personality traits than EOE and LST. Second, the HSC scale was partially measurement invariant across developmental stage, gender, and country. The results provide important insights in the psychometrics of a first measurement of
Environmental Sensitivity
in early to late adolescents. Implications for further research are discussed.
The current study investigates the contribution of children's age at adoption (M = 46.52 months, SD = 11.52 months) and parents' attachment on post-institutionalized children's attachment and ...social-emotional adjustment. A total of 132 subjects, 48 post-institutionalized children aged 3-5 years, and their adoptive parents, took part in the study. One year from adoption, children's attachment distribution was as follows: 31% secure, 42% disorganized, and 27% insecure. Parents' secure attachment increased children's probability of presenting a secure attachment pattern; specifically, mothers' attachment patterns were most strongly associated with those of their adopted children, with fathers' making an additional contribution. Two years from adoption, secure children showed more adequate social competences than their insecure and disorganized peers and presented better emotional comprehension. The effect of age at adoption was delimited to a marginal association with behavioral problems. This pattern of associations suggests that attachment - both of adoptive parents and of children - substantially fosters social-emotional adjustment of post-institutionalized children who have experienced a period in emotionally neglecting environments beyond their first year of life, regardless of their age at adoption. Implications for policies and practices are discussed.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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