The proposed research hopes to increase our understanding of the ways in which non-familial contexts influence early antisocial trajectories. Traditionally, the transition to kindergarten has been conceptualized as a crucial time for understanding processes underlying children's adjustment. However, for many children, this critical transition may occur earlier in development, at the entry into a classroom-type environment in child care settings. This transition, whenever it occurs for individual children, may represent an expansion of the domains of relationship risk or protection as new relationships provide contexts in which antisocial behaviors may be continued, exacerbated, ameliorated, or set in motion. Using nine years of prospective data already collected on a large community sample of children and their families, the proposed research will examine the specific ways in which child, familial, child care, and kindergarten processes jointly shape children's antisocial trajectories across the kindergarten through third grade period. As the transition from home to the classroom is a naturally occurring stressor that can exacerbate child and familial vulnerabilities prognostic of antisocial behavior, an important goal of the current research is to determine whether non-familial relationships moderate the effects of earlier child characteristics and familial processes. At a broader level, the study has the potential to help design effective preventive intervention programs by identifying early precursors and correlates of antisocial behavior. ? ?
| Silver, Rebecca B; Measelle, Jeffrey R; Armstrong, Jeffrey M et al. (2010) The impact of parents, child care providers, teachers, and peers on early externalizing trajectories. J Sch Psychol 48:555-83 |
