title: The link between infant regulatory problems, temperament traits, maternal depressive symptoms and children’s psychopathological symptoms at age three: a longitudinal study in a German at-risk sample
creator: Sidor, Anna
creator: Fischer, Cristina
creator: Cierpka, Manfred
subject: ddc-150
subject: 150 Psychology
subject: ddc-610
subject: 610 Medical sciences Medicine
description: Background: Difficult conditions during childhood can limit an individual’s development in many ways. Factors such as being raised in an at-risk family, child temperamental traits or maternal traits can potentially influence a child’s later behaviour. The present study investigated the extent of regulatory problems in 6-month-old infants and their link to temperamental traits and impact on externalizing and internalizing problems at 36 months. Moderating effects of maternal distress and maternal depressive symptoms were tested as well.   Methods: In a quasi-experimental, longitudinal study, a sample of 185 mother-infant dyads at psychosocial risk was investigated at 6 months with SFS (infants’ regulatory problems) and at 3 years with CBCL (children’s behavioural problems), EAS (children’s temperament), ADS (maternal depressive symptoms) and PSI-SF (maternal stress).   Results: A hierarchical regression analysis yielded a significant association between infants’ regulatory problems and both externalizing and internalizing behaviour problems at age 3 (accounting for 16% and 14% variance), with both externalizing and internalizing problems being linked to current maternal depressive symptoms (12 and 9% of the variance). Externalizing and internalizing problems were found to be related also to children’s temperamental difficulty (18 and 13% of variance) and their negative emotionality. With temperamental traits having been taken into account, only feeding problems at 6 months contributed near-significant to internalizing problems at 3 years.   Conclusions: Our results underscore the crucial role of temperament in the path between early regulatory problems and subsequent behavioural difficulties. Children’s unfavourable temperamental predispositions such as negative emotionality and generally “difficult temperament” contributed substantially to both externalizing and internalizing behavioural problems in the high-risk sample. The decreased predictive power of regulatory problems following the inclusion of temperamental variables indicates a mediation effect of temperamental traits in the path between early regulatory problems and subsequent behavioural problems. Our results support the main effects of a child’s temperament, and to some degree maternal depressive symptoms, rather than the diathesis stress model of interaction between risky environment and temperamental traits.  Trial registration: D10025651 (NZFH)
publisher: BioMed Central
date: 2017
type: Article
type: info:eu-repo/semantics/article
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserverhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/22712/1/13034_2017_Article_148.pdf
identifier: DOI:
identifier: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-227121
identifier:   Sidor, Anna ; Fischer, Cristina ; Cierpka, Manfred  (2017) The link between infant regulatory problems, temperament traits, maternal depressive symptoms and children’s psychopathological symptoms at age three: a longitudinal study in a German at-risk sample.  Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health, 11 (10).  pp. 1-17.  ISSN 1753-2000     
relation: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/22712/
rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights: Please see front page of the work (Sorry, Dublin Core plugin does not recognise license id)
language: eng