The specific aim of this project is to survey one possible developmental pathway leading to defiance and other early antisocial behaviors in male children from stressed low income homes. Basic information on the developmental pathway is necessary to the formation of risk groups and to the determination of the optimal mode and timing of intervention. Research on infant to parent attachment in non-clinical middle-class samples, and research on coercive cycles of interaction in antisocial children, generates hypotheses that should be tested in stressed families living at low socioeconomic levels, whose children so often become antisocial. The hypotheses are that insecure/avoidant attachments in the first year of life result from the interactions of demanding infants and unresponsive mothers who, living in limited space and under economic stress, engage in power struggles between 12 and 24 months, when the infants become mobile and more autonomous. The infants become more noncompliant and the mothers manipulative as a result, leading to coercive cycles of interaction between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 years. A sample of 310 parent-infant male dyads from low socioeconomic backgrounds will be recruited for participation in the longitudinal project when the children are between 12-18 months of age, with formal assessments beginning when the child is 18 months old. Assessments will be conducted in the laboratory at 18, 24, and 42 months, with a home visit included as part of the 24 month assessment.
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