Faculty Bibliography

Children of color are more likely to have poor sleep health than White children, placing them at risk for behavioral problems in the classroom and lower academic performance. Few studies, however, have utilized standardized measures of both classroom behavior and achievement. This study examined whether children's sleep (parent and teacher report) in first grade concurrently related to independent observations of classroom behavior and longitudinally predicted achievement test scores in second grade in a sample of primarily Black (86%) children (n = 572; age = 6.8) living in historically disinvested neighborhoods. Higher teacher-reported child sleepiness was associated with lower adaptive behaviors and higher problem behaviors in the classroom, and predicted lower achievement. Parent-reported bedtime resistance and disordered breathing also predicted lower achievement.

Neighborhood deprivation plays an important role in childhood health and development, but defining the appropriate neighborhood definition presents theoretical as well as practical challenges. Few studies have compared neighborhood definitions outside of highly urbanized settings. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate how various administrative and ego-centric neighborhood definitions may impact measured exposure to deprivation across the urban-rural continuum. We do so using the Family Life Project, a prospective longitudinal population-based sample of families living in North Carolina and Pennsylvania (USA), which also sets the stage for future investigations of neighborhood impacts on childhood health and development. To measure neighborhood deprivation, a standardized index of socioeconomic deprivation was calculated using data from the 2007-2011 American Community Survey. Families' residential addresses when children were 2 months of age (n=1036) were geocoded and overlaid onto a deprivation index layer created at the census block group level to construct multiple administrative and ego-centric neighborhood definitions. Friedman tests were used to compare distributions of neighborhood deprivation across these neighborhood definitions within urbanized areas, urban clusters, and rural areas. Results indicated differences in urbanized areas (Chisquare= 897.75, P<0.001) and urban clusters (Chi-square=687.83, P<0.001), but not in rural areas (Chi-square=13.52, P=0.332). Findings imply that in urban areas, choice of neighborhood definition impacts measured exposure to neighborhood deprivation. Although exposure to neighborhood deprivation appears to be less sensitive to neighborhood definition in rural areas, researchers should apply theoretical reasoning to choose appropriate definitions of children's neighborhood.

This study examined longitudinal relations between emotion knowledge (EK) in pre-kindergarten (pre-K; M_age  = 4.8 years) and math and reading achievement 1 and 3 years later in a sample of 1,050 primarily Black children (over half from immigrant families) living in historically disinvested neighborhoods. Participants were part of a follow-up study of a cluster randomized controlled trial. Controlling for pre-academic skills, other social-emotional skills, sociodemographic characteristics, and school intervention status, higher EK at the end of pre-K predicted higher math and reading achievement test scores in kindergarten and second grade. Moderation analyses suggest that relations were attenuated among children from immigrant families. Findings suggest the importance of enriching pre-K programs for children of color with EK-promotive interventions and strategies.

Relations between maternal baseline cortisol and infant cortisol reactivity to an emotion induction procedure at child ages 7, 15, and 24 months were analyzed using data from the Family Life Project (N = 1,292). The emotion induction consisted of a series of standardized and validated tasks, including an arm restraint, toy removal, and mask presentation, intended to elicit responses of fear and frustration. Results revealed that at 7 and 15 months, maternal baseline cortisol was negatively related to child cortisol reactivity, such that children of mothers with lower cortisol exhibited steeper cortisol increases in response to the emotion induction. At 24 months, the association between mother and infant cortisol was moderated by socioeconomic risk, such that maternal baseline cortisol was associated with child cortisol reactivity only in dyads characterized by low socioeconomic risk. Furthermore, at 24 months, children of mothers with low baseline cortisol and low socioeconomic risk exhibited decreasing cortisol responses, whereas children of mothers with low baseline cortisol but high risk exhibited flat cortisol responses. Children in dyads characterized by high baseline maternal cortisol also exhibited flat cortisol responses regardless of socioeconomic risk. The role of caregiver physiology in the regulation of the child's stress response in the context of adversity is discussed.

Emotion knowledge, the ability to accurately perceive and label emotions, predicts higher quality peer relations, higher social competence, higher academic achievement, and fewer behaviour problems. Less is known, however, about predictors of early development of emotion knowledge. This study examines emotion knowledge development among children attending pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten programmes in high-poverty urban schools. The study considers child pre-academic abilities, self-regulation, peer relations and parental education as predictors of emotion knowledge development over two years. The sample (n = 1034) of children living in historically disinvested neighbourhoods was primarily Black (85%) and low-income (∼61%). The sample was part of a longitudinal follow-up study of a cluster (school) randomised controlled trial in ten public elementary schools. Children's emotion knowledge was assessed with a series of tasks three times over a two-year period. At baseline, parents and teachers reported on peer relations, children completed a test of pre-academic abilities, independent observers rated child self-regulation, and parents reported on their educational attainment. Results demonstrate that emotion knowledge increases over time, and pre-academic abilities, self-regulation, peer relations, and parent education independently predict children's emotion knowledge. This study highlights multiple factors that predict emotion knowledge among primarily Black children living in historically disinvested neighbourhoods.

Socioeconomic disadvantage is consistently linked with higher risk for internalizing problems, and stress is likely one important mechanism explaining this increased risk. Few studies have examined socioeconomic differences in hair cortisol, a novel biomarker of long-term adrenocortical activity and chronic stress. Moreover, no studies have examined whether differences in hair cortisol might explain socioeconomic disparities in internalizing problems. To address these gaps, we first examined relations of socioeconomic status (SES; family income and parental education) to variation in both parents' and children's hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) and then tested whether HCC and perceptions of stress mediated relations of SES to parents' and children's internalizing symptoms. Participants were a socioeconomically diverse sample of 35 parents and 26 children (ages 5-7). Parents completed questionnaires, and hair samples were collected from parents and children. Parents reported on children's internalizing symptoms on average 2 years after the initial visit. Results demonstrated that lower parental education was associated with higher HCC for both parents and children. Effects for child HCC held even after controlling for parent HCC. Lower family income was associated with higher parent HCC, but not child HCC. This relation was nonlinear, such that the relation between HCC and income was strongest among the most disadvantaged parents. Furthermore, associations of SES with parental anxiety were significantly mediated by parental perceptions of stress and marginally mediated by parent HCC. These findings suggest that socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with greater accumulation of cortisol in hair in parents and children, and that both perceived and biological markers of stress capture important facets of the experiences that underlie socioeconomic disparities in adult anxiety.

The current study examines the additive and joint roles of chronic poverty-related adversity and three candidate neurocognitive processes of emotion regulation (ER)-including: (i) attention bias to threat (ABT); (ii) accuracy of facial emotion appraisal (FEA); and (iii) negative affect (NA)-for low-income, ethnic minority children's internalizing problems (N = 338). Children were enrolled in the current study from publicly funded preschools, with poverty-related adversity assessed at multiple time points from early to middle childhood. Field-based administration of neurocognitively-informed assessments of ABT, FEA and NA as well as parental report of internalizing symptoms were collected when children were ages 8-11, 6 years after baseline. Results suggest that chronic exposure to poverty-related adversity from early to middle childhood predicted higher levels of internalizing symptomatology when children are ages 8-11, even after controlling for initial poverty status and early internalizing symptoms in preschool. Moreover, each of the 3 hypothesized components of ER played an independent and statistically significant role in predicting children's parent-reported internalizing symptoms at the 6-year follow-up, even after controlling for early and chronic poverty-related adversity.

BACKGROUND: A growing body of evidence links socioeconomic status (SES) to children's brain structure. Few studies, however, have specifically investigated relations of SES to white matter structure. Further, although several studies have demonstrated that family SES is related to development of brain areas that support executive functions (EF), less is known about the role that white matter structure plays in the relation of SES to EF. One possibility is that white matter differences may partially explain SES disparities in EF (i.e., a mediating relationship). Alternatively, SES may differentially shape brain-behavior relations such that the relation of white matter structure to EF may differ as a function of SES (i.e., a moderating relationship). METHOD: In a diverse sample of 1082 children and adolescents aged 3-21 years, we examined socioeconomic disparities in white matter macrostructure and microstructure. We further investigated relations between family SES, children's white matter volume and integrity in tracts supporting EF, and performance on EF tasks. RESULTS: Socioeconomic status was associated with fractional anisotropy (FA) and volume in multiple white matter tracts. Additionally, family income moderated the relation between white matter structure and cognitive flexibility. Specifically, across multiple tracts of interest, lower FA or lower volume was associated with reduced cognitive flexibility among children from lower income families. In contrast, children from higher income families showed preserved cognitive flexibility in the face of low white matter FA or volume. SES factors did not mediate or moderate links between white matter and either working memory or inhibitory control. CONCLUSIONS: This work adds to a growing body of literature suggesting that the socioeconomic contexts in which children develop not only shape cognitive functioning and its underlying neurobiology, but may also shape the relations between brain and behavior.

Socioeconomic status (SES) has been linked to functioning across a variety of neurocognitive domains including language, memory, executive functioning, and social-emotional processing. We review these findings and discuss the ways in which socioeconomic context may shape neural processes such that these skills are supported by different neurobiological pathways in children from lower versus higher SES backgrounds. Moreover, we consider the mechanisms by which SES may be related to specific neurocognitive functions. Specifically, we focus on linguistic exposure and stress as two main pathways through which SES could influence neurocognitive processes and shape relations between the neural and behavioral levels of functioning. Finally, suggestions for conceptualizing and measuring SES in future work are offered.

Cortisol output in response to emotion induction procedures was examined at child age 24 months in a prospective longitudinal sample of 1,292 children and families in predominantly low-income and nonurban communities in two regions of high poverty in the United States. Multilevel analysis indicated that observed emotional reactivity to a mask presentation but not a toy removal procedure interacted with sensitive parenting to predict cortisol levels in children. For children experiencing high levels of sensitive parenting, cortisol output was high among children exhibiting high emotional reactivity and low among children exhibiting low emotional reactivity. For children experiencing low levels of sensitive parenting, cortisol output was unrelated to emotional reactivity.