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Family Poverty and Trajectories of Children’s Emotional and Behavioural Problems: The Moderating Roles of Self-Regulation and Verbal Cognitive Ability

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Abstract

Socio-economic disadvantage is strongly associated with children’s emotional (internalising) and behavioural (externalising) problems. Self-regulation and verbal cognitive ability have been related to children’s emotional and behavioural resilience to socio-economic disadvantage. Despite being inter-related, self-regulation and verbal cognitive ability have not been examined jointly as promoting resilience in young children. This study investigated the roles of self-regulation and verbal cognitive ability in children’s emotional and behavioural resilience to family socio-economic disadvantage from early to middle childhood (ages 3, 5, and 7 years; N = 16,916; 49 % girls). Using multivariate response growth curve modelling, we found that the relationship between socio-economic disadvantage and internalising problems was stronger for children with lower verbal cognitive ability. Also, poor children with high and low levels of self-regulation showed a widening gap in both emotional and behavioural problems over time. Poor and non-poor children alike benefited from self-regulation, but poor children appeared to be more vulnerable to low self-regulation. Self-regulation and verbal cognitive ability seem to be important protective factors for young children growing up in poor families.

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Fig. 1
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Notes

  1. A threshold of 4, 3, 3, and 6 have been set for ‘borderline’cases and higher than these values for abnormal cases in, respectively, emotional symptoms, peer problems, conduct problems and hyperactivity measured with the parent version of the SDQ.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (grant ES/J001414/1). We thank Nikos Tzavidis, Richard Wiggins, and Alice Sullivan for their comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology and Human Development, Institute of Education, University of London, 25 Woburn Square, London, WC1H 0AA, UK

    Eirini Flouri & Emily Midouhas

  2. Department of Quantitative Social Sciences, Institute of Education, University of London, 55-59 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0AA, UK

    Heather Joshi

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  1. Eirini Flouri
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Correspondence to Eirini Flouri.

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Flouri, E., Midouhas, E. & Joshi, H. Family Poverty and Trajectories of Children’s Emotional and Behavioural Problems: The Moderating Roles of Self-Regulation and Verbal Cognitive Ability. J Abnorm Child Psychol 42, 1043–1056 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-013-9848-3

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