J. Lawrence Aber

The Development of Ethnic Identity during Adolescence.

The development of ethnic identity is a critical facet of adolescence, particularly for adolescents of color. In order to examine the developmental trajectory of ethnic identity, African American, Latino American, and European American early and middle adolescents (N = 420) were assessed over 3 years. Two components of ethnic identity were assessed--group-esteem was found to rise for both early and middle adolescents; exploration rose for middle adolescents. African Americans and Latino Americans were lower in group-esteem but have greater increases than European Americans, particularly across a school transition. The course of ethnic identity development during early and middle adolescence, the role of school context, and the variability in developmental trajectories among racial and ethnic groups are discussed.

The effects of poverty on the mental, emotional, and behavioral health of children and youth: implications for prevention.

This article considers the implications for prevention science of recent advances in research on family poverty and childrens mental, emotional, and behavioral health. First, we describe definitions of poverty and the conceptual and empirical challenges to estimating the causal effects of poverty on childrens mental, emotional, and behavioral health. Second, we offer a conceptual framework that incorporates selection processes that affect who becomes poor as well as mechanisms through which poverty appears to influence child and youth mental health. Third, we use this conceptual framework to selectively review the growing literatures on the mechanisms through which family poverty influences the mental, emotional, and behavioral health of children. We illustrate how a better understanding of the mechanisms of effect by which poverty impacts childrens mental, emotional, and behavioral health is valuable in designing effective preventive interventions for those in poverty. Fourth, we describe strategies to directly reduce poverty and the implications of these strategies for prevention. This article is one of three in a special section (see also Biglan, Flay, Embry, & Sandler, 2012; Muñoz, Beardslee, & Leykin, 2012) representing an elaboration on a theme for prevention science developed by the 2009 report of the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine.

The role of child maltreatment in early deviations in cognitive and affective processing abilities and later peer relationship problems

Despite considerable research demonstrating the adverse consequences of child maltreatment, including a heightened risk for adaptational failures and psychopathology, longitudinal evaluations of processes contributing to negative outcomes have been limited. Problems in peer relations constitute a critical developmental risk for future maladaptation among maltreated children, transferring relationship disturbance from the family to new interpersonal contexts. The linkages of a history of child maltreatment to early deviations in cognitive/affective processes, which subsequently lead to difficulties in peer relations were examined. Specifically, in a sample of 46 maltreated and 43 nonmaltreated low-income children, laboratory assessments of affect understanding and cognitive control functioning were conducted, followed by later peer and teacher assessments of peer relations in the school setting. Maltreated children were shown to evidence early deviations in their understanding of negative affect as well as immaturity in their cognitive controls. Maltreated children also were shown to have lower social effectiveness and higher levels of undercontrolled and aggressive behavior in the school setting. Physically abused children were found to be more rejected by their peers. Cognitive control functioning partially mediated the effect of maltreatment on later social effectiveness. Negative affect understanding mediated both the relation of maltreatment on later dysregulated behavior in the peer setting and the effect of physical abuse on later rejection by peers. The results are discussed in terms of their support for organizational/transactional theory and the implications they have for prevention and intervention.

Resolving conflict creatively: Evaluating the developmental effects of a school-based violence prevention program in neighborhood and classroom context.

This study evaluated the short-term impact of a school-based violence prevention initiative on developmental processes thought to place children at risk for future aggression and violence and examined the influence of classroom and neighborhood contexts on the effectiveness of the violence prevention initiative. Two waves of developmental data (fall and spring) were analyzed from the 1st year of the evaluation of the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP), which includes 5053 children from grades two to six from 11 elementary schools in New York City. Three distinct profiles of exposure to the intervention were derived from Management Information System (MIS) data on between classroom differences in teacher Training and Coaching in RCCP, Classroom Instruction in RCCP, and percentages of students who are Peer Mediators. Developmental processes that place children at risk were found to increase over the course of the school year. Children whose teachers had a moderate amount of training and coaching from RCCP and who taught many lessons showed significantly slower growth in aggression-related processes, and less of a decrease in competence-related processes, compared to children whose teachers taught few or no lessons. Contrary to expectation, children whose teachers had a higher level of training and coaching in the RCCP but taught few lessons showed significantly faster growth over time in aggressive cognitions and behaviors. The impact of the intervention on childrens social cognitions (but not on their interpersonal behaviors) varied by context. Specifically the positive effect of High Lessons was dampened for children in high-risk classrooms and neighborhoods. Implications for future research on developmental psychopathology in context and for the design of preventive interventions are discussed.

Developmental trajectories toward violence in middle childhood: Course, demographic differences, and response to school-based intervention

The present study addressed 3 questions concerning (a) the course of developmental trajectories toward violence over middle childhood, (b) whether and how the course of these trajectories differed by demographic subgroups of children, and (c) how responsive these trajectories were to a universal, school-based preventive intervention. Four waves of data on features of childrens social-emotional development known to forecast aggression/violence were collected in the fall and spring over 2 years for a highly representative sample of 1st to 6th grade children from New York City public elementary schools (N = 11,160). Using hierarchical linear modeling techniques, synthetic growth curves were estimated for the entire sample and were conditioned on child demographic characteristics (gender, family economic resources, race/ethnicity) and amount of exposure to components of the preventive intervention. Three patterns of growth--positive linear, late acceleration, and gradual deceleration--characterized the childrens trajectories, and these trajectories varied meaningfully by child demographic characteristics. Most important, children whose teachers taught a high number of lessons in the conflict resolution curriculum demonstrated positive changes in their social-emotional developmental trajectories and deflections from a path toward future aggression and violence.

Two‐Year Impacts of a Universal School‐Based Social‐Emotional and Literacy Intervention: An Experiment in Translational Developmental Research

This study contributes to ongoing scholarship at the nexus of translational research, education reform, and the developmental and prevention sciences. It reports 2-year experimental impacts of a universal, integrated school-based intervention in social-emotional learning and literacy development on childrens social-emotional, behavioral, and academic functioning. The study employed a school-randomized, experimental design with 1,184 children in 18 elementary schools. Children in the intervention schools showed improvements across several domains: self-reports of hostile attributional bias, aggressive interpersonal negotiation strategies, and depression, and teacher reports of attention skills, and aggressive and socially competent behavior. In addition, there were effects of the intervention on childrens math and reading achievement for those identified by teachers at baseline at highest behavioral risk. These findings are interpreted in light of developmental cascades theory and lend support to the value of universal, integrated interventions in the elementary school period for promoting childrens social-emotional and academic skills.

Development and validation of adolescent-perceived microsystem scales: Social support, daily hassles, and involvement

Developed and validated instruments for urban and culturally diverse adolescents to assess their self-reported transactions with family, peer, school, and neighborhood microsystems for the constructs of social support, daily hassles, and involvement. The sample of 998 youth were from schools in three Eastern cities with high percentages of economically disadvantaged youth. Data were collected before and after the transition to junior high school or to senior high school. Blacks constituted 26%, whites 26%, and Latinos 37% of the sample. Factor analyses confirmed and enhanced the hypothesized four-factor microsystem factor structure for support, hassles, and involvement; internal consistency and stability coefficients were consistent with these structures. In general, the microsystem factors were common across gender, ethnicity, and age. However, when group differences did occur on these demographic variables, they tended to validate the salience of microsystem specificity. In contrast to the total scores, the microsystem-specific factors yielded more meaningful and differential information with regard to demographic differences and the mediating processes across a school transition.

Child maltreatment: The effects of maltreatment on development during early childhood: recent studies and their theoretical, clinical, and policy implications

Introduction In several recent reports, we have presented initial results of studies of the socioemotional development and behavioral symptomatology of maltreated preschool and early school-age children (Aber and Allen, 1987; Aber, Allen, and Cicchetti, 1988; Aber, Trickett, Carlson, and Cicchetti, 1989; Cicchetti, Carlson, Braunwald, and Aber, 1987). The purposes of this chapter are to summarize the results of these studies and to discuss their implications for a variety of unresolved scientific, clinical, and policy issues. In order to accomplish these purposes, it is first necessary to briefly describe the theoretical, clinical, and policy contexts in which these studies were designed and conducted. Contexts for the research Scientific theoretical context As we have noted elsewhere (Aber and Allen, 1987; Aber and Cicchetti, 1984; Cicchetti et al., 1987), until very recently, the few scientific studies of the effects of maltreatment were largely atheoretical. In our opinion, atheo-retical research in child maltreatment is only slightly better than no research at all. This is because no single study or set of studies will provide us with all the knowledge necessary to guide our clinical and policy efforts on behalf of maltreated children. Rather, it is by developing accurate, comprehensive theories of the etiologies of child maltreatment and the development of maltreated children that cumulative knowledge may serve as the basis for effective actions. Thus, a central issue at the very start of our studies was the selection of the general and specific theoretical frameworks within which we could conduct our studies. Although rarely commented upon, the selection of theoretical frameworks within a scientific world of multiple and competing paradigms is a critical stage of scientific research.

Relationship of Socioeconomic Status to the Etiology and Developmental Sequelae of Physical Child Abuse.

This article studies how socioeconomic status (SES) may be related to the etiology of physical child abuse and to the consequences of abuse for child development. It reports a collaboration of two independent child abuse research projects. The general perspective and design of these two projects overlapped, which made possible the assessment of the generalizability of findings across samples from two geographical locations that differ in ethnic and socioeconomic composition. The total sample consisted of 132 4- to 8-year-old physically abused and comparison children and their mothers. Measures of child-rearing context and child development common to both projects were examined.

The dynamics of economic disadvantage and children's life chances

Recent research suggests that child well-being and subsequent status attainment are influenced not only by the duration of exposure to economic disadvantage during childhood, but also by the timing and sequencing of exposure. Unfortunately, traditional measures of childrens economic deprivation typically fail to differentiate between exposures to disadvantage at different stages in childhood and largely ignore how economic circumstances change over time. In this article, the authors propose a new method for assessing economic disadvantage during childhood that simultaneously captures childrens overall levels of exposure to economic disadvantage as well as the timing and sequencing of their exposure. This new method uses finite mixture modeling to classify children into a limited number of classes with similar histories of exposure to economic disadvantage. With this new methodology, it is possible both to assess how family characteristics affect patterns of exposure to disadvantage and to directly test alternative theories about the effect that different patterns of exposure have on achievement. The authors find that extended exposure to economic deprivation during childhood is least favorable to early adulthood achievement, but that—at least for human capital formation-the timing and sequencing of poverty also are important.