Category: Child Psychology

Shy children are particularly vulnerable, the study found.

Children who experience everyday conflict between their parents have problems processing emotions, new research shows.

These problems can cause anxiety and over-vigilance, leading them to see conflict even when an interaction is neutral.

Shy children are particularly vulnerable, the study also found.

Maltreatment and neglect have been shown to alter how children process emotions.

But this study shows a lower level of adversity can have a negative effect.

Dr Alice Schermerhorn, the study’s author, said:

“The message is clear: even low-level adversity like parental conflict isn’t good for kids.”

For the study, 99 children aged 9-11 were divided into two groups based on how much parental conflict they witnessed.

All were shown pictures of couples engaged in happy, angry or neutral interactions.

Those from high-conflict homes were more likely to see the neutral interactions as either happy or angry — they didn’t seem to know into which category they fitted.

Dr Schermerhorn said:

“If their perception of conflict and threat leads children to be vigilant for signs of trouble, that could lead them to interpret neutral expressions as angry ones or may simply present greater processing challenges.”

Alternatively, Dr Schermerhorn said:

“They may be more tuned into angry interactions, which could be a cue for them to retreat to their room, or happy ones, which could signal that their parents are available to them.

Neutral interactions don’t offer much information, so they may not value them or learn to recognize them.”

Parents of shy children found it hard to identify the neutral picture, Dr Schermerhorn explained:

“Parents of shy children need to be especially thoughtful about how they express conflict.”

Low levels of adversity in the home can have significant effects on children, Dr Schermerhorn said:

“One the one hand, being over-vigilant and anxious can be destabilizing in many different ways.

On the other, correctly reading neutral interactions may not be important for children who live in high conflict homes, but that gap in their perceptual inventory could be damaging in subsequent experiences with, for example, teachers, peers, and partners in romantic relationships.

No one can eliminate conflict altogether, but helping children get the message that, even when they argue, parents care about each other and can work things out is important.”

The study was published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (Schermerhorn, 2018).

The behaviours were linked to adult occupational success and earning more 50 years later.

Being interested in school, being a responsible student and having good reading and writing skills all predict people’s occupational success decades later, new research finds.

Even 50 years after someone had left high school, these factors still predicted if people had a more prestigious job or not.

Being a good student also predicted how much money people earned 50 years later.

Dr Marion Spengler, who led the research, said:

“Educational researchers, political scientists and economists are increasingly interested in the traits and skills that parents, teachers and schools should foster in children to enhance chances of success later in life.

Our research found that specific behaviors in high school have long-lasting effects for one’s later life.”

The study used data from 346,660 U.S. high school students first collected in 1960.

Plus 81,912 of them were followed up 11 years later and 1,952 were followed up 50 years later.

The researchers took into account all sorts of other factors like IQ, personality traits and the family’s socioeconomic status.

Dr Spengler said:

“Student characteristics and behaviors were rewarded in high school and led to higher educational attainment, which in turn was related to greater occupational prestige and income later in life

This study highlights the possibility that certain behaviors at crucial periods could have long-term consequences for a person’s life.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Spengler et al., 2018).

There is something very strange happening to adolescence.

The period of adolescence is lasting much longer than it used to, according to some psychologists.

Traditionally, the period of adolescence — when people transition to adulthood — ended at 19-years-old.

Now some researchers believe this transition is not happening until 24-years-old.

Many young people do not marry until their early 30s

A few decades ago many would be married in their early 20s.

Young people are also living with their parents longer than they used to.

They are having children later and spending longer in education.

Many young people in the UK do not leave home until they are 25-years-old.

Professor Susan Sawyer, the study’s first author, said:

“Age definitions are always arbitrary, but our current definition of adolescence is overly restricted.

The ages of 10-24 years are a better fit with the development of adolescents nowadays.”

The study’s authors write:

“An expanded and more inclusive definition of adolescence is essential for developmentally appropriate framing of laws, social policies, and service systems.

Rather than age 10–19 years, a definition of 10–24 years corresponds more closely to adolescent growth and popular understandings of this life phase and would facilitate extended investments across a broader range of settings.

The study was published in the journal The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health (Sawyer et al., 2018).

Up to 1 in 3 people in the US report having been bullied during childhood — most often at middle school.

Bullying is linked to mental health problems in later years, new research finds.

However, these tend to fade over the years, showing the remarkable resilience of many children.

The study followed 11,108 twins who were followed until they were 16-years-old.

Dr Jean-Baptiste Pingault, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Previous studies have shown that bullied children are more likely to suffer mental health issues, but give little evidence of a causal link, as pre-existing vulnerabilities can make children both more likely to be bullied and experience worse mental health outcomes.

We used a robust study design to identify causation.”

Bullying was linked to later conduct problems, depression, anxiety and other psychological problems.

However, five years later, most of these issues had faded away.

Dr Pingault said:

“While our findings show that being bullied leads to detrimental mental health outcomes, they also offer a message of hope by highlighting the potential for resilience.

Bullying certainly causes suffering, but the impact on mental health decreases over time, so children are able to recover in the medium term.

The detrimental effects of bullying show that more needs to be done to help children who are bullied.

In addition to interventions aimed at stopping bullying from happening, we should also support children who have been bullied by supporting resilience processes on their path to recovery.

Our findings highlight the importance of continuous support to mental health care for children and adolescents.”

Dr Sophie Dix, Director of Research at MQ: Transforming Mental Health said:

“This important research is further strong evidence of the need to take the mental health impacts of bullying seriously.

We hope this study provides fresh impetus to make sure young people at risk — and those currently being bullied — get effective help as soon as possible.

More than one in five UK young people say they’ve recently been bullied.

And now this unprecedented study gives the strongest evidence to date that bullying can directly cause many common mental health conditions — and have a serious effect on mental health in the long-term.

But the good news is that it shows that people can and do get better — demonstrating the importance of resilience.

Now we need to understand why this is and develop new ways, through research, to intervene and change lives.”

The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry (Singham et al., 2017).

The study is one of the few to follow children over a decade.

Spanking can have negative consequences up to 10 years later, new research finds.

The study found that children spanked in infancy had worse behaviour and personalities in their teens.

The study is one of the few to follow children over a decade.

Professor Gustavo Carlo, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Long-term studies on the links among parenting, temperament and children’s social behaviors have been limited, especially among racially diverse, low-income populations.”

The data come from 1,840 mothers and children living below the poverty level.

African-American children were at particular risk.

Those physically disciplined at 15 months were more likely to be delinquent and aggressive in fifth grade.

In European-American children, early spanking was linked to greater negative emotions, such as irritability.

Professor Carlo said:

“Our findings show how parents treat their children at a young age, particularly African-American children significantly impacts their behavior.

It is very important that parents refrain from physical punishment as it can have long-lasting impacts.

If we want to nurture positive behaviors, all parents should teach a child how to regulate their behaviors early.”

The study was published in the journal Developmental Psychology (Streit et al., 2017).

Children get more satisfaction from these and get on better with them.

Children are more satisfied with relationships with their pets than their siblings, new research finds.

Children also seem to get on better with their pets than their siblings.

The research helps to underline the importance of pets for children

Mr Matt Cassells, the study’s first author, said:

”Anyone who has loved a childhood pet knows that we turn to them for companionship and disclosure, just like relationships between people.

We wanted to know how strong these relationships are with pets relative to other close family ties.

Ultimately this may enable us to understand how animals contribute to healthy child development”

The researchers surveyed 12-year-olds from 77 families.

Mr Cassells continued:

‘‘Even though pets may not fully understand or respond verbally, the level of disclosure to pets was no less than to siblings.

The fact that pets cannot understand or talk back may even be a benefit as it means they are completely non-judgmental.

While previous research has often found that boys report stronger relationships with their pets than girls do, we actually found the opposite.

While boys and girls were equally satisfied with their pets, girls reported more disclosure, companionship, and conflict with their pet than did boys, perhaps indicating that girls may interact with their pets in more nuanced ways.’’

Dr Nancy Gee, a study co-author, said:

“Evidence continues to grow showing that pets have positive benefits on human health and community cohesion.

The social support that adolescents receive from pets may well support psychological well-being later in life but there is still more to learn about the long term impact of pets on children’s development.”

The study was published in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology (Cassells et al., 2017).

Around one-third of children around the world suffer this type of abuse.

Emotional abuse of children can be just as harmful as physical abuse, a new study finds.

Emotional abuse includes behaviours like intimidation, humiliation and rejection.

Around one-third of children around the world suffer emotional abuse, which is far more common than physical abuse.

Professor David Vachon, the study’s first author, said:

“…although people assume physical abuse is more harmful than other types of abuse, we found that they are associated with similar consequences.

These consequences are wide-ranging and include everything from anxiety and depression to rule-breaking and aggression.”

The researchers studied 2,300 children who attended a summer camp over 20 years.

The children were from low-income families and aged between 5 and 13-years-old.

The results overturned some common assumptions, Professor Vachon explained:

“We also tested other assumptions about child maltreatment, including the belief that each type of abuse has specific consequences, and the belief that the abuse has different consequences for boys and girls of different races.

We found that these assumptions might also be wrong.

In fact, it seems as though different types of child abuse have equivalent, broad, and universal effects.”

The research should help change how people think about child abuse, Professor Vachon said:

“One implication, is that effective treatments for maltreatment of any sort are likely to have comprehensive benefits.

Another implication is that prevention strategies should emphasize emotional abuse, a widespread cruelty that is far less punishable than other types of child maltreatment.

One plan is to examine the way abuse changes personality itself — does it change who we are?

The point is to go beyond symptoms and ask whether abuse changes the way we tend to think, feel, and act.”

The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry (Vachon et al., 2015).

Image credit: Vale