| Description |
Identifying predictors of classroom success is critical for supporting children's education. My first aim was to examine whether infant attachment security is positively associated with four cognitive outcomes among a high-risk sample of children: pre-academic language skills and executive function as measured in early childhood and academic achievement and cognitive ability as measured in middle childhood. My second aim was to examine whether language skills and executive function mediate the association between infant attachment security and both academic achievement and cognitive ability. These aims are relevant to a theoretical debate concerning whether cognitive outcomes can be predicted by early attachment security (e.g., Sroufe, 1988; Van IJzendoorn et al., 1995). These predictions are based on prior work showing an association between infant attachment security and both language skills and executive function (e.g., Bernier et al., 2015; Van IJzendoorn et al., 1995) as well as research showing that language skills and executive functions predict later academic success (Duncan et al., 2007). However, the body of research examining infant attachment security as a predictor of cognitive outcomes has almost exclusively focused on low-risk samples. To address this limitation, my sample included 149 mother-child dyads referred to Child Protective Services due to allegations of maltreatment when children were infants. Of the sample, 66% of mothers described their children as Black or African American. Attachment security was measured at approximately 24 months using the Strange Situation Paradigm (Ainsworth et al., 1978). Receptive language and executive function were assessed at approximately 48 months using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Dunn & Dunn, 1981) and the Dimensional Change Card Sort (Beck et al., 2011), respectively. When children were age nine years, academic achievement and cognitive ability were measured using the Woodcock-Johnson III test battery, which is designed to assess practical skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics as well as generalized abilities such as verbal knowledge and reasoning, use of inductive logic, cognitive flexibility, and cognitive efficiency (Mather & Greg, 2001). Regarding the first aim, infant attachment security did not significantly predict any of the four outcomes. Possible interpretations of these unexpected results include infant attachment security being a generally poor predictor of cognitive outcomes, attachment security being a poor predictor of cognitive outcomes among high-risk children due to other intervening factors derailing the early developmental trajectory, or that methodological factors dampened an otherwise existent effect. Related to the second aim, receptive language and executive function predicted both academic achievement and cognitive ability five years later. These findings have implications for programs designed to support the education of at-risk children, including the possibility of assessing receptive language and executive function during the preschool years to identify children that would benefit from an early intervention, as well as developing programs designed to promote school success by targeting emerging receptive language and executive function skills prior to school entry. |
