Progress 01/02/12 to 09/30/16
Outputs
Target Audience:My target audience remains other scholars and researchers who investigate environmental influences on human development, as well as parents and policy makers. With regard to the former, I have published relevant work in scholarly journals; with regard to the latter, I have published an op-ed piece in the New York Times and an essay in Scientific American MIND. My research has also been discussed/described in a variety of websites for parents. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?While my students were not directly involved in the preparation of this paper, they were kept abreast of the thinking that led to it, the way it was being conducted, and the preliminary and final findings--as a means of illustrating the theoretical ideas that were at its foundation. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?This work was published in a widely read journal dealing with child development and discussed on a number of websites that target parents and child care professionals. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Most developmental research on environmental influences on human development, especially that focused on early-life experiences, has sought to illuminate how early experiences shape future psychological and behavioral development. It has become ever more evident, however, that it is physical health that may be most influenced by developmental experiences and environmental exposures early in life. In order to address this issue, my colleagues and I took advantage, at my initiative, of a large project carried out in the midwest to see whether--and how--prenatal stress and maternal depression and negative parenting in infancy affected, via a complex mediational process, physical and mental health in young adulthood. We hypothesized mediational roles for elevated levels of cortisol in early childhood, reflecting a legacy of stress and early maturation of the adrenal gland. Results proved consistent with expectations in that greater maternal stress in pregnancy predicted more depression in mothers in infancy; that led to somewhat increased levels of cortisol in the preschooler, which itself forecast accelerated physical maturation in the form of advanced adrenarcheal development, which itself led to poorer mental and physical health. These findings are important because they challenge traditional notions that what adversity early in life does is simply generate wear and tear on the developing system and, thereby, undermine physical and mental health. And this is because of the detected mediational effect involving adrenarche. That is, the role of this process in the developmental cascade that was illuminated suggests that the organism is accelerating reproductive development in the face of risks, via elevated cortisol levels, in the service of passing on genes to future generations (i.e., fitness), and that the downside consequences for mental and physical health represent an evolutionary trade off: Increase chances of reproducing by accelerating pubertal development at the cost of a less healthy and perhaps even eventually shorter life. While the findings from our work do not prove this point, they clearly raise and illustrate it. To the extent that other work emerges which supports this interpretation of how development operates--which was formulated before conducting the empirical work--it should lead to a radical reconceptualization of the nature and goal of development: It is not about making people healthy and happy per se, but rather of serving fitness goals. To the extent that health and happiness serve that end, they will be promoted; but as our work indicates, when that is not the case, those won't be the targets of development. Accelerating development makes sense given risks of not reproducing, even if there are post-reproductive health costs associated with doing so. While awareness of this "alternative (developmental) reality" holds the promise of altering idealized view of the nature of development, it buttresses the claim that intervening early in life to promote psychological and physical health is wise. Indeed, the evolutionary-developmental perspective that guided the work and which the evidence discerned prove consistent with even suggests that delaying such efforts to ameliorate risks to well-being, broadly conceived, may be costly--because at some point relatively early in life the developing organism may need to "decide" whether to accelerate development or not; and once this "decision" is made--not consciously, of course, modifying an established developmental trajectory may be very difficult.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Belsky, J, Ruttle, P.L., Boyce, W.T., Armstrong, J.M., & Essex, M.J. (2015). Early Adversity, Elevated Stress Physiology, Accelerated Sexual Maturation and Poor Health in Female. Developmental Psychology, 51, 816-822.
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Progress 10/01/14 to 09/30/15
Outputs
Target Audience:My target audience remains other scholars and researchers who investigate environmental influences on human development, as well as parents and policy makers. With regard to the former, I have published relevant work in scholarly journals; with regard to the latter, I have published an op-ed piece in the New York Times and an essay in Scientific American MIND. My research has also been discussed/described in a variety of websites for parents. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have endeavored to share these results with journalists writing about children and child care. We have been disappointed that they have not been picked up on as much as we might have liked. No doubt this is because of the current economic situation, given that the policy changes that our results suggest would be worth pursuing would be expensive to implement. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will continue to share these results with professionals and journalists. The latter often contact me given my extensive experience studying child care effects; and while I always highlight the "bad news" about child care effects in the USA, I also make clear how the Norwegian results imply that the disconcerting US findings would not emerge if we had family-leave and child-care policies that better met the needs of families and children.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
There is repeated indication in research on the effects of day care on child development that lots of time spent in non-maternal child care, especially in centers, beginning in the first year of life on a full- or near-full-time basis carries developmental risk, perhaps most notably of children being somewhat more aggressive and disobedient than they would otherwise be as a result of their early, extensive and continuous child-care exposure. Indeed, the large-scale American study which followed more than 1,000 children to age 15 found that children who spent more time in any kind of child care across their first 5 years of life proved to be more impulsive and engaged in more risk taking than did agemates who spent less time in child care early in life. This long-term effect of early-life experiences raised the question of whether such apparent consequences of early, extensive and continuous child care, at least as we know it and have it in the USA, were inevitable; and, more fundamentally, whether there were experiences following entry into school that could mitigate the long-term adverse effects detected in adolescence. Therefore, in this work we looked to see whether especially supportive parenting in the middle-childhood years would attenuate or even eliminate the long-term effect of child care under consideration. We found that it did upon analyzing data from the large-scale US child care study mentioned in the preceding paragraph. More specifically, if parenting was highly sensitive and supportive in the middle childhood years, the previously documented adverse effects of lots of time in child care early in life on adolescent functioning did not materialize. Importantly, then, these findings make clear that development remains open to re-direction as a function of later-life experiences. These results are profoundly important from an applied perspective. They clearly suggest that the problematic functioning of adolescents who began child care early in life is preventable even in the face of seemingly risky child care experiences. And this is because efforts to promote supportive, sensitive parenting in middle childhood should reduce if not eliminate entirely the otherwise adverse effects of this early-life experience--which happens to be normative the in lives of American children today. Our results, then, have important implications for family life in the USA, including California.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
20134
Citation:
Burchinal, M., Vandell, D.L., & Belsky, J. (2014). Is the Prediction of Outcomes from Early Child Care Moderated by Later Maternal Sensitivity? Developmental Psychology, 50, 542-553.
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Progress 10/01/13 to 09/30/14
Outputs
Target Audience: My target audience remains other scholars and researchers who investigate environmental influences on human development. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? We have endeavored to share these results with journalists writing about children and child care. We have been disappointed that they have not been picked up on as much as we might have liked. No doubt this is because of the current economic situation, given that the policy changes that our results suggest would be worth pursuing would be expensive to implement. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We will continue to share these results with professionals and journalists. The latter often contact me given my extensive experience studying child care effects; and while I always highlight the "bad news" about child care effects in the USA, I also make clear how the Norwegian results imply that the disconcerting US findings would not emerge if we had family-leave and child-care policies that better met the needs of families and children.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
There is repeated indication in research on the effects of day care on child development that lots of time spent in non-maternal child care, especially in centers, beginning in the first year of life on a full- or near-full-time basis carries developmental risk, perhaps most notably of children being somewhat more aggressive and disobedient than they would otherwise be as a result of their early, extensive and continuous child-care exposure. Such evidence has proven highly controversial and the question has become not simply whether such results are robust, but whether such seemingly adverse effects--of an experience that is widespread in the USA and especially in much of California where the cost of living is high, requiring both parents (or just the single parent) to work and use child care--is inevitable. Indeed, many have argued that such adverse effects of early and extensive child care are a result of policies and practices unique to the USA in the modern industrialized world. That is, these negative effects emerge in a society where job-protected parental leave following a child's birth is unpaid and only lasts for three months and where support for quality child care is limited. In other words, the negative effects detected in prior US research does not so much reflect the nature of the child-care experience, but the broader ecology in which families and child care operate in US society. To the extent this analysis is correct, it implies that in a place where the ecology of family life and child care is different, that effects of child care should be different. It was with a view of testing this proposition that we conducted a study of child care effects in a nation with dramatically different social policies and child care practices. Norway proved to be an ideal setting, as parents are guaranteed paid parental leave for the child's first year of life; almost all children enter center-based child care early in the second year; and the quality of that care is uniformly high due to legal requirements and regular monitoring. What we discovered was that under these conditions--dramatically different from the USA (and California)--there were no effects of exposure to child care on children's aggression, as so often has been documented in the US. While there was some hint of more conflicted teacher-child relationships when children had lots of child care experience, the effect detected was very small; and, as already noted, did not translate into children with such child care experience being more aggressive than other children. These results are profoundly important from a US perspective. They clearly suggest that the problematic functioning of children starting child care very early in life in the USA is not simply a function of the amount of care they experience. Results of our cross-national "natural experiment" implies that if the US had policies like Norway--most notably, extensive, paid parental leave and high quality care--that negative effects would no longer be evident. Our results, in consequence have major implications for how family and child-care policy should develop in the USA, including California.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Solheim, E., Wichstrom, L., Belsky, J., & Berg-Nielsen, T.S. (2013). Does time in childcare and peer-group exposure predict poor socioemotional adjustment in Norway? Child Development, 84, 1701-1715.
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Progress 01/01/13 to 09/30/13
Outputs
Target Audience: For this still early phase of the project, the target audience are other scholars and researchers who investigate person-X-environment interactions. Following up the presentation of a new method for addressing this issue, they have now been presented with work implementing it, thereby revealing its utility. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? To repeat: We have refrained from sharing these findings with community organizations until they are replicated. The risk we seek to minimize is that they could be interpreted by some as implying, incorrectly, that for most children quality of care is not important (i.e., only for those carrying the 7-repeat DRD4 allele. While that may appear to be the case for the developmental outcomes which were the focus of this report, such a conclusion would be much too broad as there is as yet no basis, whether replicated or not, for concluding that other aspects of development that we did not focus upon, most notably, cognitive-linguistic development and academic achievement, are only subject to the influence of quality of child care for certain children with certain genotypes. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Our goal is to continue investigating how important features of the early child development environment influence children's well-being, broadly conceived, and whether such effects apply to some children more than others; and thus whether targeting some children could make strategic sense in a time of limited resources with which to intervene in children's lives.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The ultimate goal of the larger project with which this report is concerned is to identify factors and processes that shape human development, including perhaps most notably characteristics of individuals that make them more vs. less likely to be susceptible to environmental influences that are both positive and negative in character. But before further progress could be made in realizing the latter goal, it proved necessary to develop analytic methods for evaluating person-X-environment interactions in complex data sets. Because this necessary first step has been achieved, as noted in last year's report, we were positioned to deploy it when asking about a core issue facing American families with young children today: Are some children more affected by their early day care experience than are others? We addressed this question by taking advantage of data from a large, multi-site study of children, including a sizable subset from California. More specifically, we studied children from the larger study on whom DNA had been gathered when they were 15 years of age and looked at whether either of two different genetic factors might help illuminate which children were more and less susceptible to effects of child care on behavior problems and social competence reported by teachers from just before school entry (caregivers at day care) through sixth grade. Both the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) and the dopamine receptor gene (DRD4) were selected for consideration because each has been found in other work to differentiate those more and less affected by their developmental experiences. In addition to focusing on whether the genetic make-up of the child influenced whether he or she was influenced by the quality of child care he or she experienced, we also evaluated whether this might be the case with respect to the effects of how many hours per week on average the child was in care across his or her first 54 months of life and the extent to which the child experienced center-based care during this time rather than some other arrangement. Results revealed that the DRD4 (but not 5-HTTLPR) polymorphism moderated the effect of child care quality (but not quantity or type) on caregiver-reported externalizing problems at 54 months and in kindergarten and teacher-reported social skills at kindergarten and first grade --but not thereafter. Only children carrying the 7-repeat allele proved susceptible to quality-of-care effects. Intriguingly, the discerned gene-X-environment interactions did not account for previously reported parallel ones involving difficult temperament in infancy that had been previously detected. We have refrained from sharing these findings with community organizations until they are replicated. The risk we seek to minimize is that they could be interpreted by some as implying, incorrectly, that for most children quality of care is not important (i.e., only for those carrying the 7-repeat DRD4 allele. While that may appear to be the case for the developmental outcomes which were the focus of this report, such a conclusion would be much too broad as there is as yet no basis, whether replicated or not, for concluding that other aspects of development that we did not focus upon, most notably, cognitive-linguistic development and academic achievement, are only subject to the influence of quality of child care for certain children with certain genotypes.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Belsky, J. & Pluess, M. (2013). Genetic Moderation of Early Child Care Effects on Social Adjustment Across Childhood: A Developmental Analysis. Child Development, 84, 1209-1225.
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Progress 01/01/12 to 12/31/12
Outputs
OUTPUTS: As of this juncture, there has been nothing disseminated to communities of interest, given the early-stage nature of the project's development. The ultimate goal of the larger project is to identify factors and processes that shape human development, including perhaps most notably characteristics of individuals that make them more vs. less likely to be susceptible to environmental influences that are both positive and negative in character. But before further progress could be made in realizing the latter goal, it has been necessary to develop analytic methods for evaluating person-X-environment interactions in complex data sets. This necessary first step has now been completed, setting the stage for us to conduct secondary analyses of data sets on children and families so as to identify individuals who benefit more from contextual support and enrichment and who are more likely to be negatively affected by contextual adversity. Only once this next step is taken will there be an opportunity-or reason-to disseminate information. PARTICIPANTS: Not relevant to this project. TARGET AUDIENCES: For this preliminary phase of the project, the target audience are other scholars and researchers who investigate person-X-environment interactions. That is, our method needs to be peer reviewed and implemented in order to have confidence in it. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Not relevant to this project.
Impacts
One of the primary goals of this research program is to identify characteristics of individuals that make them more or less susceptible to positive and/or negative environmental factors vis-a-vis human development, including the functioning of children, parents and families more generally. In order for such progress to be made, analytic/statistical methods needed to be developed to afford direct testing of hypotheses that certain characteristics will make individuals especially susceptible to both negative and positive environmental experiences. This is because existing statistical approaches are of limited power-and precision-when it comes to this task. That is, they essentially involve exploratory analyses of data to see if there are statistical interactions between select person and select contextual factors in predicting select developmental outcomes, whether the latter are behavioral, psychological, economic or otherwise in character. But this is a limited way to proceed when investigators have strong hypotheses as to which individuals are most likely to be susceptible to environmental influences-due to pre-existing exploratory research. Thus, we have developed a new approach to testing person-X-environment interactions that can more powerfully evaluate and illuminate whether individuals with particular characteristics-be they temperamental, physiological or genetic-are indeed more susceptible to environmental influences. With this new and more powerful approach developed, we can now proceed to "road test it" to address a host of questions about persona-X-environment interaction and differential susceptibility to environmental influences.
Publications
- Widaman, K.F., Helm, J.L., Castro-Schilo, L., Pluess, M., Stallings, M.C. & Belsky, J. (2012). Distinguishing Ordinal and Disordinal Interactions. Psychological Methods, 17, 615-622.
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