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Correlates of Childhood vs. Adolescence Internalizing Symptomatology from Infancy to Young Adulthood

Journal of Youth and Adolescence volume 46, pages 197–212 (2017)Cite this article

Abstract

In light of its associations with child and adolescent health and well-being, there remains a need to better understand the etiological underpinnings and developmental course of internalizing symptomatology in children and adolescents. This study leveraged intensive longitudinal data (N = 959; 49.6 % females) to test the hypothesis that internalizing symptoms in childhood may be driven more strongly by family experiences whereas internalizing symptoms in adolescence may derive more uniquely from familial loading for affective disorders (i.e., maternal depression). We evaluated the relative contributions of (a) family experiences (b) maternal depression, and (c) peer influences in testing this hypothesis. The results indicated that family predictors were more strongly correlated with childhood (relative to adolescent) internalizing symptoms. In contrast to previous findings, maternal depression also exhibited stronger associations with childhood internalizing symptoms. Although often overlooked in theories concerning potential differential origins of childhood vs. adolescent internalizing symptomatology, peer experiences explained unique variation in both childhood and adolescent internalizing problems.

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Notes

  1. In light of the well documented finding that the initiation of puberty is associated with a rise in depressive and internalizing symptomatology among girls relative to boys (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2001; Zahn-Waxler et al., 2000) we also conducted interaction analyses to examine whether child sex moderated any of the focal associations between our predictor sets composited across time and internalizing symptomatology occurring in childhood and adolescence. None of the interaction effects were significant.

  2. Steiger (1980) recommended tests of separate, non overlapping (Case B; see Steiger 1980) dependent correlations between covariates composited within childhood and childhood internalizing symptomatology versus correlations of covariates composited within adolescence and adolescent internalizing symptomatology were not materially different than tests of dependent correlations noted above with the exception of associations between father absence and internalizing symptomatology (r = 0.20 [childhood] vs. r = 0.13 [adolescence], p = 0.14).

  3. In the current study, we observed correlations in excess of 0.80 between the anxious/depressed and internalizing raw scale scores for teacher-reports and in excess of 0.90 for parent-reports. The correlation between these scales for youth self-reports at age 15 was 0.93 and at age 18 it was 0.92 (all ps  < 0.01).

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Acknowledgments

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John D. Haltigan Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 6225, 6th Floor, 80 Workman Way, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6J 1H4.

Authors’ Contributions

JDH contributed to the conceptualization of the study, performed the statistical analyses, and drafted the manuscript; GIR contributed to the conceptualization of the study, interpretation of the data, and drafting of the manuscript; EC and CBLF also assisted in interpretation of the analyses and in the drafting of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

This project was supported by NIH Grants HD025447 and HD054822 (Cathryn Booth-LaForce, PI), as well as by a cooperative agreement (U10-HD25420) with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation (2006-00365). The contents of this manuscript are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development or the Charles Steward Mott Foundation. We are grateful to the NICHD SECCYD participants for their time.

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  1. Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, ON, M6J 1H4, Canada

    John D. Haltigan

  2. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Glenn I. Roisman

  3. University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    Elizabeth Cauffman

  4. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Cathryn Booth-LaForce

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  1. John D. Haltigan
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Haltigan, J.D., Roisman, G.I., Cauffman, E. et al. Correlates of Childhood vs. Adolescence Internalizing Symptomatology from Infancy to Young Adulthood. J Youth Adolescence 46, 197–212 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-016-0578-z

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Keywords

  • Environment
  • Internalizing symptomatology
  • Peer victimization
  • Psychopathology
  • Puberty