Change in Risk Patterns Across Early Childhood and Children’s First-grade Adjustment

Abstract

Exposure to early risks are linked with less optimal child development across domains. These contextual risks may display various configurations and each configuration could be linked to specific developmental outcomes. Based on 1364 mother–child dyads from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, this study examined the different risk profiles children experienced in early development and how changes in these profiles over time predicted a wide range in their school adjustment. Using latent class analysis (LCA), we found that children’s contextual risks could be characterized by one of the five risk typologies at each assessment from 6-months to first grade: low risk, high socio-cultural risk, high psychological risk, high socio-economic risk, and high risk across domains. Moreover, these risk profiles they experienced were fairly stable over time: children rarely moved in or out of certain risk classes from infancy through middle childhood. As a function of these risk typologies they experienced across time, children demonstrated different levels of academic and socio-emotional adjustment in first grade. These findings link configurations of risks children experience across infancy and early childhood to their first-grade adjustment observed by multiple informants.