Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
Dev Psychopathol. 2019 Dec;31(5):1911-1921. doi: 10.1017/S0954579419000828.
Several research teams have previously traced patterns of emerging conduct problems (CP) from early or middle childhood. The current study expands on this previous literature by using a genetically-informed, experimental, and long-term longitudinal design to examine trajectories of early-emerging conduct problems and early childhood discriminators of such patterns from the toddler period to adolescence. The sample represents a cohort of 731 toddlers and diverse families recruited based on socioeconomic, child, and family risk, varying in urbanicity and assessed on nine occasions between ages 2 and 14. In addition to examining child, family, and community level discriminators of patterns of emerging conduct problems, we were able to account for genetic susceptibility using polygenic scores and the study's experimental design to determine whether random assignment to the Family Check-Up (FCU) discriminated trajectory groups. In addition, in accord with differential susceptibility theory, we tested whether the effects of the FCU were stronger for those children with higher genetic susceptibility. Results augmented previous findings documenting the influence of child (inhibitory control [IC], gender) and family (harsh parenting, parental depression, and educational attainment) risk. In addition, children in the FCU were overrepresented in the persistent low versus persistent high CP group, but such direct effects were qualified by an interaction between the intervention and genetic susceptibility that was consistent with differential susceptibility. Implications are discussed for early identification and specifically, prevention efforts addressing early child and family risk.
先前已有几个研究团队追踪了儿童早期或中期出现的行为问题（CP）的模式。本研究通过使用遗传信息、实验和长期纵向设计，从幼儿期到青春期，扩展了这一先前的文献，以检查早期出现的行为问题轨迹以及此类模式的幼儿期鉴别器。该样本代表了一个由 731 名幼儿及其多样化家庭组成的队列，这些家庭是根据社会经济、儿童和家庭风险招募的，在城市之间存在差异，并在 2 至 14 岁之间进行了 9 次评估。除了检查行为问题出现模式的儿童、家庭和社区水平鉴别器外，我们还能够使用多基因评分和研究的实验设计来解释遗传易感性，以确定随机分配给家庭检查（FCU）是否可以区分轨迹组。此外，根据差异易感性理论，我们测试了 FCU 对遗传易感性较高的儿童的影响是否更强。结果增加了先前的研究结果，这些结果记录了儿童（抑制控制[IC]、性别）和家庭（严厉的育儿、父母抑郁和教育程度）风险的影响。此外，FCU 中的儿童在持续低 CP 组和持续高 CP 组中的比例过高，但这种直接影响受到干预和遗传易感性之间相互作用的限制，这与差异易感性一致。讨论了对早期识别的影响，特别是针对儿童早期和家庭风险的预防措施。
