Coley Rebekah Levine, Lynch Alicia Doyle, Kull Melissa
Boston College, Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology, 140 Commonwealth Ave, Chestnut Hill MA 02467.
Early Child Res Q. 2015;32:94-104. doi: 10.1016/j.ecresq.2015.03.001.
Environmental chaos has been proposed as a central influence impeding children's health and development, with the potential for particularly pernicious effects during the earliest years when children are most susceptible to environmental insults. This study evaluated a high-risk sample, following 495 low-income children living in poor urban neighborhoods from infancy to age 6. Longitudinal multilevel models tested the main tenets of the ecobiodevelopmental theory, finding that: (1) numerous distinct domains of environmental chaos were associated with children's physical and mental health outcomes, including housing disorder, neighborhood disorder, and relationship instability, with no significant results for residential instability; (2) different patterns emerged in relation to the timing of exposure to chaos, with more proximal exposure most strongly associated with children's functioning; and (3) the intensity of chaos also was a robust predictor of child functioning. Contrary to expectations, neither biological vulnerability (proxied through low birth weight status), maternal sensitivity, nor maternal distress moderated the role of chaos. Rather, maternal psychological distress functioned as a pathway through which environmental chaos was associated with children's functioning.
环境混乱被认为是阻碍儿童健康与发展的核心因素，在儿童最易受环境侵害的幼年时期，可能产生尤为有害的影响。本研究评估了一个高危样本，追踪了495名生活在城市贫困社区的低收入儿童从婴儿期到6岁的情况。纵向多层次模型检验了生态生物发展理论的主要原则，发现：（1）环境混乱的众多不同领域与儿童的身心健康结果相关，包括住房混乱、邻里混乱和关系不稳定，而居住不稳定则无显著结果；（2）与接触混乱的时间有关出现了不同模式，更近期的接触与儿童的功能最密切相关；（3）混乱的强度也是儿童功能的有力预测指标。与预期相反，生物脆弱性（通过低出生体重状况来衡量）、母亲敏感性或母亲痛苦均未调节混乱的作用。相反，母亲的心理痛苦是环境混乱与儿童功能相关的一条途径。
