Early Childhood Performance on Tool Task Predicts Aggression in Middle Childhood

• Sydney Ballenger, Psychology, University of Delaware
• Krista Ristano, Psychology, University of Delaware

• Mary Dozier, Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware

Exposure to early life adversity can place children at risk for emotional and behavioral dysregulation and problematic developmental outcomes. Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up (ABC) is a 10 week parenting program designed to increase parental sensitivity and enhance children’s emotional, behavioral, and physiological regulatory capabilities. As part of their participation in the ABC intervention, children from high risk families in the greater Philadelphia area (n=75) took part in a challenging task at age two in mother-child dyads.The tool task is a problem solving situation that measures the child’s ability to coordinate affect, cognition, and behavior, where the mother is also there, readily, for assistance. At age 10, the same children independently completed a self-report measure of overt aggression. The purpose of this study was to understand how the exhibition of behaviors assessed during a challenging task at age 2 predicted aggression levels in middle childhood. Children who demonstrated higher non-compliance and higher dependence on their parental figure in the Tool Task scored lower levels of aggression on the measure completed at age 10. Non-compliance and dependence were highly positively correlated (r=0.417, p<.001). After controlling for sex, results remained statistically significant with higher dependency associated with lower aggression ( R2= 0.128, p= 0.012) and higher non-compliance associated with lower aggression (R2= 0.111, p= 0.026). This finding is relevant in understanding both the long-term effects of early childhood behaviors and what may be considered developmentally appropriate, or optimal, for toddlers when faced with a challenging task. In the future, it would be interesting to study how testosterone levels may impact overt aggression and possible ABC intervention effects on early childhood Tool Task behaviors.