Integrated Research Activities for Developmental Science (IRADS)- Child Development Research Collaborative

University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

From many sectors of our society, concerns have been raised about the poor academic achievement of large numbers of American children. Those children who struggle in the first few years of formal schooling are more likely than their high-achieving peers to exhibit academic difficulties in subsequent years. They are also at increased risk for a range of emotional and behavioral problems that are costly to society. Because the PIs have little understanding of why some children do well and others do not, this project was designed to addresses critical questions concerning the ways in which the transition to early formal schooling confers advantage on some children and disadvantage on others. From our perspective, progress in understanding the multiple pathways that may be taken by individual children requires a multi-level approach ? from genes to environments ? for characterizing development. Such a multidisciplinary approach is at the core of the program of Integrative Research Activities for Developmental Science (IRADS) research that is to be carried out by collaborators associated with the Center for Developmental Science (CDS). The transition to school presents the developing child with a unique set of social, cognitive, and emotional challenges, each of which carries with it increased demands for self control. In the context of the classroom, children not only interact with new authority figures and classmates, but they also engage in novel rule-based activities and encounter raised expectations for performance. Central to the PIs exploration of these critical challenges to the child is an investigation that builds upon the success of a unique longitudinal and mixed method study that was launched in 2002 with a broad sample of 200 infants and their families. The PIs unusual cohort ? composed of equal numbers of African Americans and European Americans, with each group including families across a wide socioeconomic spectrum ? was studied from birth through the preschool years. A complex protocol was employed to gather information concerning temperament and emotional regulation; cognitive processes and executive functioning; family and peer relationships; social, child-care, and community influences; and biological and genetic processes. Given this rich foundation, the plan is to follow the sample over the next five years, as the children navigate the transition to school. Assessments of the children, families, and school contexts will be carried out when the children are in Kindergarten and Grades 1, 2, and 3. In addition, the data from this study will be augmented by genetic information that we will obtain from participants in two additional longitudinal projects that are being conducted currently by CDS faculty members. The PIs efforts are informed fully by the exciting findings that the PIs have obtained to date and lead the PIs to specify unique hypotheses that span levels of analysis. As examples, consider the following two hypotheses, one that reflects the effects of Gene X Environment co-actions on development, and one that explores the implications of early emotion regulation and cognitive processes for the transition to school. -Children with the 7-repeat allele and the T.7 hapoltype are at an advantage with regard to focused attention, an advantage that will translate into better emotion regulation and/or cognitive performance and school achievement. Positive parenting and/or a structured classroom setting will be protective factors for children who do not have this genetic advantage. The disadvantages of poor classroom and/or home environment will be even more pronounced in children who also lack this genetic variation -Children who are highly reactive temperamentally as preschoolers will experience more difficulty with the transition to formal schooling than will less reactive children, but this relation will be moderated by cognitive factors (e.g., high levels of working memory, skills in phonic awareness), the nature of the classroom environment, and emotional regulation. By using tracking children as they make the transition to school with a multilevel genes-to-environments assessment protocol, it will be possible to elucidate both the plasticity of adaptation and development and the impact of contextual constraints. In addition, the project provides an unusual collaborative context for the professional development of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young faculty members.