Associations Between Caregiving Instability and Adopted Childrens Inhibitory Control Abilities

1
Associations Between Caregiving Instability and
Adopted Childrens Inhibitory Control Abilities
Erin Lewis, Mary Dozier, John P. Ackerman, and
Sandra Sepulveda Kozakowski
Figure
Introduction

Measures

• Inhibitory control refers to the ability to
  inhibit a dominant response while holding two
  rules in working memory
• Inhibitory control develops considerably between
  the ages of two and five years and is dependent
  on prefrontal cortex development
• Deficits in inhibitory control have been
  associated with attention problems,
  hyperactivity, social incompetence, aggression,
  and academic failure
• Early adverse caregiving experiences have been
  associated with deficits in prefrontal cortex
  development as well as deficits in behavioral
  inhibition
• Children in foster care are at increased risk of
  developing behavior problems suggestive of
  inhibitory control deficits

• Caregiving Instability
• Number of foster placements was assessed from
  case records
• For adopted children, number of placements
  ranged from 1 to 5 (M 1.7 SD 1.0)

• Inhibitory Control and Working Memory (Gerstadt
  et al., 1994)
• Two card games in which children needed to
  remember two newly learned rules
• In each card game, children were given 2
  learning trials followed by 16 test trials (8
  cards of each type)

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Day/Night Stroop Task Requires children to
remember two rules and inhibit a dominant
response
Say Night
Say Day
The Present Study
Working Memory Task Requires children to
remember two rules but does not require
inhibition of a dominant response (serves as
a Control task)
Conclusions

• In this study, we examined whether caregiving
  instability experienced in infancy
• and toddlerhood predicted adopted childrens
  inhibitory control abilities at the
• age of five or six years
• Three groups of children were included children
  who had never been placed in foster care,
  adopted children who had been in a stable
  adoptive placement, and adopted children who
  had experienced multiple foster placements
• We expected children in the multiple placements
  group to have poorer inhibitory control
  abilities than children who had experienced more
  stable caregiving

• Adopted children who had experienced multiple
  foster placements prior to adoption (i.e.,
  caregiving instability) performed worse on the
  Day/Night Stroop Task at age five or six compared
  to children who had never been placed in foster
  care and to adopted children who had experienced
  one stable placement
• Caregiving instability was predictive of poorer
  inhibitory control even after controlling for
  age, IQ, and working memory abilities (i.e.,
  control task)
• Stability of care predicted inhibitory control
  better than age at first placement, prenatal
  substance exposure, prematurity, or maltreatment
  history
• The results suggest the importance of placing
  foster children into pre-adoptive homes when
  possible and limiting the number of placement
  disruptions that children experience

 
Say White
Say Black
Results
Summary of Block Entry Regression Analysis for
Variables Predicting Childrens Day/Night Stroop
Task Performance (N 102)
Sample

• R2 0.11 for Step 1
• ?R2 0.07 for Step 2
• R2 0.18 for Full Model

Selected References
Diamond, A., Taylor, C. (1996). Development of
an aspect of executive control Development of
the abilities to remember what I said and to Do
as I say, not as I do. Developmental
Psychobiology, 29, 315-334.Gerstadt, C., Hong,
Y., Diamond, A. (1994). The relationship
between cognition and action Performance of
children 3.5 to 7 years old on a Stroop-like
day-night test. Cognition, 53, 129-153.Kochanska
, G., Murray, K. T., Harlan, E. T. (2000).
Effortful control in early childhood Continuity
and change, antecedents, and implications for
social development. Developmental Psychology, 36,
220-232.
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Poster presented at the Society for Research on
Child Development Biennial Meeting, Boston, MA
(March 29, 2007)