The roles of attachment style and maternal depression in the development of childhood depression

This study aimed to determine how stable parent ratings of their infant's temperament/attachment style is across one year of development and establish if there is a specific pathway that leads to child depression and or internalizing and externalizing behaviors originating with maternal depression or insecure attachment styles between the infant and their mothers. The data for this study was collected as part of a multisite, randomized trial of Hawaii's Healthy Start Program (HSP) (Duggan et al., 2004). The Hawaii Healthy Start Program (HSP) is a home visiting program targeted at families at-risk of child abuse and neglect. The racial and ethnic characteristics for total participants are as follows: 12 percent identified as White, 9 percent identified as Asian, 13 percent identified as Pacific Islander, 20 percent identified as Filipino, 20 percent identified as Native Hawaiian, 27 percent identified as Black/ Multiracial (Duggan et al. 1999). The mean age for participating mothers was 23.4 (SD = 5.8) and 68 percent of the families had incomes belopoverty line (Duggan et al., 1999). The following measures were used in the present study: The Bate's Attachment Scale, The Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), The Child Behavioral Checklist (CBCL), and The Children's Depression Inventory (CDI). Unlike the majority of literature, the present findings suggest that maternal depression and attachment issues during the first year of life served as only a very modest risk for future child internalizing symptoms. Similar to the findings regarding child depression, relations between parent and teacher rated externalizing symptoms, maternal depression, and attachment were fairly small. Only for parent rated externalizing symptoms there was a small association between externalizing score and maternal depression and a small association between parent rating of externalizing behaviors and parent ratings of child attachment. Keywords: child depression, child externalizing behaviors, maternal depression

Development of the START Program for Academic Readiness and Its Impact on Behavioral Self-regulation in Japanese Kindergarteners

The “first-grade problem” of the lack of concentration, listening, and following of instruction has been widely identified among Japanese kindergarten students. To promote their executive functioning and self-regulation to prevent this issue, we developed the Social Thinking and Academic Readiness Training (START) program. The experimental group in which the program was implemented contained 79 children (average age = 73.22 months), and the standard practices group contained 70 children (average age = 72.91 months). Before and after the intervention, the children underwent tasks to test their behavioral self-regulation and executive function (working memory). For behavioral self-regulation, a significant interaction occurred between condition (experimental and standard practices) and time (pre- and post-test), suggesting that these 6 START lessons promoted self-regulation. However, no effects were found on either auditory or visual memory. Teacher reports in surveys were consistent with the executive functioning outcomes, reporting improvement in children’s concentration, listening, and self-regulation skills.

Effects of the Head Start Program on Socioecological Obesogenic Factors in American Children

Head Start is a nationwide developmental program for low-income families. This study aimed to investigate the association between the Head Start program and children’s BMI status, as well as their quality of life with respect to socioecological obesogenic factors. This cross-sectional study employed the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten cohort (ECLS-K) in which the data were collected in 2007 and analyzed in 2019. Propensity-score matching analysis was performed to examine the association between the Head Start program and children’s BMI status, as well as the quality of life, controlling for socioecological obesogenic factors. A total of 3753 children (representing 1,284,209 at the population level) were recruited in this study (mean age: 13.69 years; girls: 49.42%). In the final matched model, the program did not have a statistically significant effect on children’s obesity. Fewer African American children participated in school-sponsored activities, perceived themselves as overweight, lived in a household with fewer family members, had less strict TV regulations, and were more likely to be overweight than their counterparts. Outcomes suggest that multiple dimensions of sociological obesogenic factors including individual, parental, familial, and community support factors affect the weight of children from low-income families and should be considered when establishing behavioral and policy interventions to thwart the childhood obesity epidemic.