Thesis advisor: Rebekah Levine Coley / Emerging research suggests that children's physical health may account for some of the variability in developmental competencies at school entry, which are the cognitive, learning, and behavioral skills necessary for long-term academic achievement. Most studies on children's health find that neonatal risks, like low birth weight and premature birth, impair children's early functioning, but little is known about other domains of children's health, like global health or acute and chronic conditions, which may be associated with functioning at school entry. Moreover, it is unclear what role physical health may play in children's access to and engagement in home and early childhood education center-based learning contexts, which may function as pathways linking early health disparities with later development. This dissertation tested direct associations between a range of childhood health problems and school readiness skills at kindergarten entry, as well as indirect and interacted associations with early learning contexts. Given the well-established socioeconomic gradient in both health and development, analyses also explored whether associations linking health and development were conditional on family socioeconomic status. Data were drawn from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (Birth Cohort; N = 5,900), which follows a cohort of children born in 2001 from infancy through kindergarten entry. Linear regressions and path analyses revealed that four of five health conditions were associated with lower school readiness skills, most consistently in the domains of cognitive and learning skills. Neonatal risks, poor health, and hospitalization functioned directly to predict lower cognitive and learning skills, where as asthma diagnosis predicted heightened learning skills. Only poor health functioned indirectly through more restricted home learning activities. Children's time in ECE functioned in a compensatory role to attenuate associations between hospitalization and lower school readiness skills. Across all models, there was no evidence that measured associations varied across the family socioeconomic spectrum. Findings highlight the importance of interdisciplinary research on child well-being and draw attention to potential avenues for prevention and intervention. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

This thesis explores the role of youth workers who utilize the arts in Soacha, Colombia. Through a historical and anthropological lens the findings reveal the objectives of the workers and the impact the work has as an intervention with the children. Through the case study of nine youth workers and two administrators of the local NGO, La Fundación Proyecto de Vida, I show how a comprehensive approach strengthens youth's social and personal capacities. This Colombian model of intervention includes workshops that cover areas such as music, visual arts, movement, physical health, and the environment. In addition to the workshops the organization provides psychological resources through family counseling, art and psychodynamic therapy, along with onsite cafeteria service. Ultimately I illustrate how this comprehensive, arts-based approach to support the youth can break the cycle of violence that is otherwise perpetuated by the lack of governmental social programs.

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Recent work has shown that paranoia - excessive suspiciousness of others - exists on a spectrum of severity in the adult general population. Yet little is known about either the nature of mistrust in children or whether studying paranoia in children could increase our understanding of the aetiology of adult paranoia and inform early prevention strategies. The current thesis, comprised of three main studies, adopted a hitherto lacking developmental perspective to examine social mistrust in middle childhood. The first goal was to assess the structure, prevalence, correlates and short-term stability of childhood mistrust in nonclinical samples drawn from two different countries (the UK and Hong Kong). Classroom-based surveys of 8- to 14-year-olds from the UK (N = 1,086) and Hong Kong (N = 1,470) were carried out between 2011 and 2014. A new measure developed for the study was administered: The Social Mistrust Scale. The second goal was to examine children’s definitions and reasons for social trust and mistrust. This was a large qualitative examination of interviews with children, in order to learn more about the phenomenon at this age and generate future research questions to test. The final main goal was to test the association with childhood mistrust and a number of potential causal factors identified from the adult literature. Cognitive processes (i.e., reasoning bias, theory of mind and executive function) and psychosocial risk factors (i.e., bullying, loneliness, peer-rated social status, and hostile attribution bias) were studied. Overall, this thesis presented evidence that: (i) Social mistrust is prevalent in a minority of children, and it is associated with both internalising and externalising problems; (ii) Qualitative interviews indicated that mistrust was often well-justified but that a minority of children may well be having excessive suspiciousness about being targeted; (iii) Mistrustful children (especially with mistrust about school) report persistent victimisation and hostile attribution bias but do not show biases in non-affective cognitive performance compared with trusting peers; and (iv) There is moderate agreement between self-report and interviewer assessments of paranoia, child and peer ratings of mistrust but not with parent ratings. This thesis began the task of researching a developmental perspective on childhood suspiciousness, extending the work in adults. Mistrust is present in children and associated with symptoms of mental health problems and adverse experiences. The extent to which the fears were unfounded (i.e. true paranoia was assessed) was not established in the thesis nor the causal direction of the associations found. Continued research on social mistrust in community children and beyond may provide promising avenues to earlier preventions and better treatments of paranoia.

Conflict is an inherent part of human relationships and is ubiquitous within families. These disputes are not in themselves harmful to children. Rather, it is the strategies used to resolve conflict that have a bearing on children’s health and development, notably whether family members employ aggressive or violent tactics. The study examines evidence from a sample of 161 children, selected to be representative of children living in Dublin, Ireland. It explores children’s responses to different methods of conflict resolution in two family relationships and seeks to expand the understanding of how social problems, such as child maltreatment and domestic violence, occur within normative family processes. The study shows that the use of psychological and minor physical aggression to resolve conflict in the parental relationship and the parent-child relationship is typical. It occurs in 90 per cent of families over a twelve-month period. Severe physical force or violence between family members is less common. The study finds that while there is considerable variation in children’s responses to conflict resolution strategies, children who experience aggression in both the inter-parental and parent-child relationship are at elevated risk for behavioural and emotional problems. The frequency and severity of the aggression explains some of the variance in child well-being but not all. The study lends support to Bronfrenbrenner’s (1979) ecological theory by demonstrating empirically how the individual, family, neighbourhood, and potentially societal, contexts moderate the transmission of poor conflict resolution strategies to children's health and development. The findings suggest that while the child's age and gender play a small role, family and neighbourhood contexts are strongly implicated in outcomes for children exposed to risky conflict resolution tactics in the home. In particular, parental mental health problems, low socio-economic status and poor peer relationships increase children’s vulnerability to the effects of aggressive conflict tactics. The relevance of the evidence for policy and practice are drawn out. A distinction can be drawn between responses to pathological behaviour by parents and normative, yet harmful, conflict resolution strategies. Public health approaches to promote reasoning within families as well as prevention and early intervention strategies that support all families, not just economically disadvantaged parents known to child protection and domestic violence agencies, are required. In addition, greater sensitivity to children's gender and stage of development and more attention to policies that reduce stress on families and violence within communities are advocated.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

This study investigates a single retrospective case of psychoanalytic infant observation. Two principal aims emerged from the evolving investigation. The first concerned the methodology involved in examining observational data using psychoanalytic methods, the second being the exploration of what can be learned from the systematic study of a single recorded case of infant observation using Grounded Theory. The focus for the study concerned the infant’s first year and considered the structuring of the infant’s psychic life, which takes place in the initial relationship(s). From the phenomenological description of behaviours in the observed context, combined with the emotional field described in the observation reports,emotional meaning was inferred. The systematic use of line-by-line coding, abductive reasoning and the formation of categories led to discussion of the following detail:The first month of life; Exploration of the period when mother was traumatically absent, followed by her return; Selected observations that reveal parent/infant recovery. Several conclusions are reached regarding the observed infant. The first concerns the identification of synchronous rhythms or patterns in the mother/infant relationship where they were found to form a backdrop to aesthetic reciprocity. Rupture in aesthetic attunement was instrumental in activating a cascade of early proto-defensive organisation into later development. This took the form of oral preoccupation; namely regurgitation, rumination and choking. Whilst this defensive organisation may be specific to the observed infant, the study draws attention to developmental processes that may be relevant to infants in general. There is evidence to support how babies are more integrated than first thought by Bick (1968) and are ‘open’ to triangular relating in the first weeks. Proto-defensive structures may be evidenced from the start of post-natal life. This study makes a contribution to the body of knowledge concerning rumination in infancy.

This thesis comprehends four essays investigating strategies to fight against poverty. The first essay explores a series of police operations to pacify the slums of Rio de Janeiro to understand the impacts of intrauterine exposure to violence on birth outcomes. One argues that pregnancies starting before, but ending around the pacification dates are ‘quasirandomly’ exposed to exogenous shocks of violence during pregnancy. The results show that each month pregnant women are exposed to pacification increases birth weights by 4 grams and reduces the probability of low birth weight (< 2500 grams) by 1.2 percent compared to pregnancies ending just before pacifications. A second essay uses Brazilian legislative change making it mandatory for private hospitals to publicly disclose information about physicians’ performance. The results show a reduction in scheduled C-sections by 4.8 percent; which two-thirds originating from physicians anticipating to information disclosure. The third essay proposes an empirical strategy to estimate bullying effects on labour and schooling outcomes when "true" bullying is observed inaccurately. The estimates show that high-school bullying decreases University attendance by 3.4 percent and increases the probability of being not in education, employed or in training after high-school by 2.8 percent. Estimations neglecting misreport implicates in impacts two-thirds smaller. And finally, the fourth essay shows that poor households increase their participation in social groups after receiving Bolsa Família. The strategy explores households registered in Cadastro Único, and performs a propensity score difference-in-difference framework to minimize selection bias. Becoming a recipient of Bolsa Família increases .09 standard deviations the number of social affiliation and increase from 6.1 to 8.9 percent the probability of engaging in social groups. Altogether, this thesis implicates that investing in early stages of life harvest significant benefits to disadvantaged children, it also shows that victims of bullying need sustained support after high school, and that conditional cash transfers foster social engagement.

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