Infants in Poverty Show Varying Psychological Response to Caregiver's Environment

For infants growing up in poverty, the ability to both adapt and regulate to normal society can be a daunting task. And according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, a combination of physiological vulnerability and poor care giving may actually lead these children to show increased problem behaviors later in childhood.

Researcher Elisabeth Conradt and colleagues took a look at data from a longitudinal study that followed women at risk for parenting problems and their infants. Conradt, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk, conducted the study as a graduate student at the University of Oregon.

Researchers looked at respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) to asses infant's vulnerability - a physiological marker of the degree to which infants are attuned to their environment-when the infants were five months old. They also looked at infants' attachment style and level of problem behaviors at 17 months.

Results showed interactions between physiological vulnerability and environmental context in relationship to infants' developmental outcomes.

Infants with high RSA at five months and who were raised in an unstable environment were more likely to exhibit emotional problems than those with a high RSA baseline fostered in a secure one.

These results support the idea that poverty is not a uniform stressor. For instance, infants with high baseline RSA raised in disorganized environments may have increased the infant's ability to develop coping strategies that could become problematic later in childhood. And infants with high-RSA baseline raise in stable environments were able to respond more to their caregivers in a positive way.

Infants with low baseline RSA showed higher than average problem behaviors, regardless of care giving environment. This may indicate, according to the study, than poverty may play a bigger role than care giving. 

To find out more about the study, visit Association for Psychological Sciences.