This program of research involves short- and long-term longitudinal studies in Goteborg (Sweden) and Berlin (Germany) of children with contrasting or distinctive child care experiences. The longitudinal study in Sweden includes 145 children recruited in 1982 at an average age of 16 months. The quality of home and alternative care had little apparent effect on the children's verbal abilities, social skills, and personal maturity as the children moved into the formal educational system and their individual personalities came to affect the adjustment to school. Preliminary analyses revealed no apparent effects of contrasting early care patterns on educational histories and the psychological status of these children at 15 years of age. Longitudinal analyses revealed substantial stability over time in their personality styles, although children became less extraverted, more agreeable, more conscientious and more ego-controlled with age. Boys' levels of ego resiliency were more stable over time than girls'; boys became less resilient from middle childhood into mid adolescence, whereas girls became more ego resilient as they entered adolescence. In 2003, researchers began contacting participants to assess their status at age 20. In the Berlin longitudinal study, we have been measuring the psychophysiological, socioemotional, and behavioral tendencies of infants so that we can assess the effects of prior individual differences in behavioral and psychophysiological reactivity and infant-mother attachment on the adaptation to out-of-home center care. During an adaptation phase, in which mothers remained in the centers with their toddlers, securely-attached infants had markedly lower cortisol levels than insecure infants, suggesting that they gained more protective support from the presence of their mothers. When the mothers stopped remaining with their infants, the cortisol responses of the securely-attached toddlers were much more dramatic than the responses of the insecurely attached toddlers: on the initial separation days, cortisol levles rose over the first 60 minutes after arrival to levels twice as high as at home. Secure toddlers also fussed/cried upon separation more than insecurely attached toddlers. Cortisol and behavioral markers of distress were correlated in securely attached but not in insecurely attached toddlers. Attachments were more likely to become or remain secure when mothers remained longer in the child care facilities with their toddlers. Close examination of individual differences in cardiac reactivity and of the formation of relationships with careproviders is currently under way.
| Ahnert, Lieselotte; Gunnar, Megan R; Lamb, Michael E et al. (2004) Transition to child care: associations with infant-mother attachment, infant negative emotion, and cortisol elevations. Child Dev 75:639-50 |
| Ahnert, Lieselotte; Lamb, Michael E (2003) Shared care: establishing a balance between home and child care settings. Child Dev 74:1044-9 |
