Attachment--and loss.

Childhood multiple risk factor exposure exceeds the adverse developmental impacts of singular exposures. Multiple risk factor exposure may also explain why sociodemographic variables (e.g., poverty) can have adverse consequences. Most research on multiple risk factor exposure has relied upon cumulative risk (CR) as the measure of multiple risk. CR is constructed by dichotomizing each risk factor exposure (0 = no risk; 1 = risk) and then summing the dichotomous scores. Despite its widespread use in developmental psychology and elsewhere, CR has several shortcomings: Risk is designated arbitrarily; data on risk intensity are lost; and the index is additive, precluding the possibility of statistical interactions between risk factors. On the other hand, theoretically more compelling multiple risk metrics prove untenable because of low statistical power, extreme higher order interaction terms, low robustness, and collinearity among risk factors. CR multiple risk metrics are parsimonious, are statistically sensitive even with small samples, and make no assumptions about the relative strengths of multiple risk factors or their collinearity. CR also fits well with underlying theoretical models (e.g., Bronfenbrenner's, 1979, bioecological model; McEwen's, 1998, allostasis model of chronic stress; and Ellis, Figueredo, Brumbach, & Schlomer's, 2009, developmental evolutionary theory) concerning why multiple risk factor exposure is more harmful than singular risk exposure. We review the child CR literature, comparing CR to alternative multiple risk measurement models. We also discuss strengths and weaknesses of developmental CR research, offering analytic and theoretical suggestions to strengthen this growing area of scholarship. Finally, we highlight intervention and policy implications of CR and child development research and theory.

Cumulative risk and child development.

A biopsychosocial model of the development of adolescent chronic conduct problems is presented and supported through a review of empirical findings. This model posits that biological dispositions and sociocultural contexts place certain children at risk in early life but that life experiences with parents, peers, and social institutions increment and mediate this risk. A transactional developmental model is best equipped to describe the emergence of chronic antisocial behavior across time. Reciprocal influences among dispositions, contexts, and life experiences lead to recursive iterations across time that exacerbate or diminish antisocial development. Cognitive and emotional processes within the child, including the acquisition of knowledge and social-information-processing patterns, mediate the relation between life experiences and conduct problem outcomes. Implications for prevention research and public policy are noted.

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A Biopsychosocial Model of the Development of Chronic Conduct Problems in Adolescence

The Face of Emotion

Our purpose in the present meta-analysis was to examine the extent to which discrete emotions elicit changes in cognition, judgment, experience, behavior, and physiology; whether these changes are correlated as would be expected if emotions organize responses across these systems; and which factors moderate the magnitude of these effects. Studies (687; 4,946 effects, 49,473 participants) were included that elicited the discrete emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, and anxiety as independent variables with adults. Consistent with discrete emotion theory, there were (a) moderate differences among discrete emotions; (b) differences among discrete negative emotions; and (c) correlated changes in behavior, experience, and physiology (cognition and judgment were mostly not correlated with other changes). Valence, valence-arousal, and approach-avoidance models of emotion were not as clearly supported. There was evidence that these factors are likely important components of emotion but that they could not fully account for the pattern of results. Most emotion elicitations were effective, although the efficacy varied with the emotions being compared. Picture presentations were overall the most effective elicitor of discrete emotions. Stronger effects of emotion elicitations were associated with happiness versus negative emotions, self-reported experience, a greater proportion of women (for elicitations of happiness and sadness), omission of a cover story, and participants alone versus in groups. Conclusions are limited by the inclusion of only some discrete emotions, exclusion of studies that did not elicit discrete emotions, few available effect sizes for some contrasts and moderators, and the methodological rigor of included studies.

Discrete emotions predict changes in cognition, judgment, experience, behavior, and physiology: a meta-analysis of experimental emotion elicitations

This study examined the relations between alternative representations of poverty cofactors and promotion processes and teacher reports of the problem behaviors of 6- and 7-year-old children from economically disadvantaged families (N = 159). The results showed that single-index representations of risk and promotion variables predicted child aggressive behaviors but not child anxious/depressed behaviors. An additive model of individual risk indicators performed similarly. Smaller indexes representing clusters of parent adjustment variables and family instability variables, however, differentially predicted aggressive and anxious/depressed behaviors, respectively. The results suggest the importance of promotion processes and of representing environmental adversity at varying levels of specificity for children from economically disadvantaged families.

The Relations between Cluster Indexes of Risk and Promotion and the Problem Behaviors of 6- and 7-Year-Old Children from Economically Disadvantaged Families.

This article is a theory driven descriptive study of the emotional memories of economically disadvantaged children. We confirmed our hypothesis that children's emotional memories would fit into categories defined in terms of the phenomenology and functions of discrete emotions, as described in differential emotions theory. We hold that such theoretically derived categories are exemplified by events that act as affordances or that constrain causal interpretations and the development of emotional memories. We also argue that the ability to recount appropriate causal events for a broad range of emotions indexes an aspect of emotion knowledge. We see the latter as a part of the broader construct of emotional intelligence.

Karen L. Levinson

Papers

The Relations between Cluster Indexes of Risk and Promotion and the Problem Behaviors of 6- and 7-Year-Old Children from Economically Disadvantaged Families.

Children's Emotional Memories: An Analysis in Terms of Differential Emotions Theory