Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in Early Childhood and Their Associations with Middle Childhood Behavior Problems(2017) Schroeder, Allison; Mittal, Mona; Family Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Experiences in early childhood lay the foundation for physical and psychological health and wellbeing throughout the life course. A large body of literature demonstrates a graded relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and health and social outcomes. Children living in poverty are disproportionately likely to experience multiple adversities, placing them at risk for negative health and developmental outcomes and contributing to widening health disparities. Among the outcomes associated with ACEs are internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, which increase children’s risk of later depression and anxiety, substance use, criminality, low socioeconomic status, and chronic physical health problems. In spite of the substantial knowledge base that has developed around childhood adversity and its association with behavior problems, there are gaps in the literature that warrant further research. Firstly, few studies utilizing prospective longitudinal data have examined the role of timing and duration of exposure to adversities in early childhood, and their relationship with later behaviors. Secondly, researchers have only just begun exploring whether certain patterns or constellations of risk factors are common among different groups of children, and whether these patterns place certain groups at greater risk for behavior problems. A third gap relates to the role of father involvement by unmarried fathers and the potential for these fathers to promote more positive outcomes among children exposed to various levels of early adversity. The three studies in this dissertation analyze data from four waves of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to document associations between ACEs experienced at ages 1, 3, and 5, and behavior problems at age 9. Life course theory provides an overarching framework for the dissertation. The first study examines the associations between the accumulation, timing, and duration of ACEs in the first five years of life and odds of behavior problems at age 9. The second study employs latent class analysis to identify patterns of risk exposure and their potential association with age 9 behaviors. The third study investigates whether early father involvement by fathers who were unmarried at the child’s birth moderates the association between early childhood adversity and age 9 behavior problems.Item EXPRESSIVE SUPPRESSION IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: LINKS WITH NEGATIVE EMOTION, PHYSIOLOGY, AND PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR(2018) Gross, Jacquelyn T; Cassidy, Jude; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A commonly used strategy for regulating emotions is known as expressive suppression (ES), in which a person attempts to conceal ongoing emotion-expressive behavior. ES has been frequently studied in adults and ample evidence indicates that it is linked to a host of negative outcomes, including depression and anxiety, suicide ideation, worse relationship and social functioning, cognitive impairment, and negative health outcomes. Relatively little is known about ES in children, despite the potential for ES to have lasting consequences on development (e.g., by contributing to a negative developmental cascade in which poor emotion regulation interferes with emerging competencies). The present study used a multi-method approach to investigate the emotional, physiological, and social behavioral correlates of both state and trait ES in middle childhood, a time when patterns of emotion regulation become more stable. Children ages 9 to 11 (n=117) reported their trait ES before coming into the lab, and then were randomly assigned to suppress or not suppress while watching a sad movie scene. Skin conductance was measured during and after the movie scene, and children gave multiple reports of their subjective emotions over the duration of the visit. After the movie scene, all children participated in tasks measuring prosocial behavior and empathy for others’ distress. Results indicated that trait suppression predicted skin conductance levels during the movie scene but did not predict emotions or social behavior. Group assignment did not affect outcomes. Exploratory analyses suggested that spontaneous ES of the control group during the movie scene predicted greater subjective feelings of sadness while suppressing. Additionally, exploratory mixed-effects models with child ratings of emotion nested within individuals suggested that trait sadness ES predicted changes in subjective sadness over the duration of the visit.Item Developmental Neural Correlates of Social Interaction(2016) Rice, Katherine Ann; Redcay, Elizabeth; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Children develop in a sea of reciprocal social interaction, but their brain development is predominately studied in non-interactive contexts (e.g., viewing photographs of faces). This dissertation investigated how the developing brain supports social interaction. Specifically, novel paradigms were used to target two facets of social experience—social communication and social motivation—across three studies in children and adults. In Study 1, adults listened to short vignettes—which contained no social information—that they believed to be either prerecorded or presented over an audio-feed by a live social partner. Simply believing that speech was from a live social partner increased activation in the brain’s mentalizing network—a network involved in thinking about others’ thoughts. Study 2 extended this paradigm to middle childhood, a time of increasing social competence and social network complexity, as well as structural and functional social brain development. Results showed that, as in adults, regions of the mentalizing network were engaged by live speech. Taken together, these findings indicate that the mentalizing network may support the processing of interactive communicative cues across development. Given this established importance of social-interactive context, Study 3 examined children’s social motivation when they believed they were engaged in a computer-based chat with a peer. Children initiated interaction via sharing information about their likes and hobbies and received responses from the peer. Compared to a non-social control, in which children chatted with a computer, peer interaction increased activation in mentalizing regions and reward circuitry. Further, within mentalizing regions, responsivity to the peer increased with age. Thus, across all three studies, social cognitive regions associated with mentalizing supported real-time social interaction. In contrast, the specific social context appeared to influence both reward circuitry involvement and age-related changes in neural activity. Future studies should continue to examine how the brain supports interaction across varied real-world social contexts. In addition to illuminating typical development, understanding the neural bases of interaction will offer insight into social disabilities such as autism, where social difficulties are often most acute in interactive situations. Ultimately, to best capture human experience, social neuroscience ought to be embedded in the social world.Item Maternal and Paternal Parenting and Girls' and Boys' Attachment Security in Middle Childhood(2005-10-05) Dwyer, Kathleen; Rubin, Kenneth H; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Current attachment security is presumed to reflect both early experiences and current relationships with attachment figures. However, few researchers have examined the parenting behaviors that are linked with attachment during middle childhood. The overall purpose of the present study was to investigate the relations among maternal and paternal parenting behaviors (sensitivity, encouragement of autonomy) and girls' and boys' attachment security with respect to their mothers and fathers. It has been suggested that fathering becomes more important as children grow older and form relationships outside the family. In addition, the type of sensitivity that promotes attachment security with mother may differ from the type of sensitivity that promotes attachment security with father. A perspective on attachment that encompasses security in both attachment and exploration suggests that parents must both respond sensitively to child distress and support autonomy. It was hypothesized that mothers are more likely to act as a safe haven and respond to child distress, whereas fathers are more likely to act as a secure base for exploration. Data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD SECCYD) were analyzed. Participants were restricted to "traditional nuclear" families. Data relevant to the current study were collected at laboratory and home visits when children were in Grades 3, 4, and 5. Parental sensitivity and respect for autonomy were observed in child-parent interactions in Grades 3 and 5. Parent-reported encouragement of autonomy was assessed at Grades 3 and 4. Child-reported felt security with respect to each parent, observed dyadic felt security, and parent-reported child attachment behaviors were assessed in Grades 3 and 5. Structural equation modeling was used to test the study hypotheses. The model that emerged contained significant correlations between maternal and paternal sensitivity and between child-mother and child-father attachment at both Grades 3 and 5, stability of both sensitivity and attachment, and predictive relations only within Grade 5. Taken as a whole, the results point to the need to take a developmental pathways perspective and to examine the reciprocal relations between children and parents in middle childhood.