Attention problems and teacher-child relationships across the elementary school years

These studies were informed by a transactional developmental model in which children's attention problems and inhibitory-control abilities both shape and are shaped by the quality of their teacher-child relationships over time. Using longitudinal data from Phases II and III of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development and latent growth modeling, in the first study, I examined a theoretical model in which the association between children's pre-kindergarten attention problems and their fifth-grade academic-achievement levels was explained by transactional processes between children's attention problems and their teacher-child relationships over time. My findings supported the theorized model; however, the results were more consistent for teacher-child conflict than for closeness. Specifically, in the models considering teacher-child conflict, I found a multi-step pathway linking children's pre-kindergarten attention problems to their later levels of academic achievement. Higher levels of (maternally-rated) attention problems prior to school-entry were associated with more-conflictual (teacher-rated) teacher-child relationships in kindergarten. In turn, higher levels of conflict were associated with more-positive increases in children's attention-problem levels through fourth grade. In turn, more-positive attention-problem growth rates were associated with lower levels of fifth-grade achievement. There was also evidence that children's (residual) attention-problem and teacher-child conflict growth rates were correlated; children with more-positive attention-problem growth rates tended to show more-positive conflict growth. Study Two extended Study One by considering reciprocal associations between children's inhibitory-control abilities--a cognitive ability thought to underlie partially the broad attention-problem phenotype--and the quality of their teacher-child relationships over the same developmental span. Using cross-lagged structural equation models, I found that, across multiple points in elementary school, children with weaker inhibitory-control abilities tended to have more-conflictual teacher-child relationships, subsequently. Inversely, higher levels of teacher-child conflict were predictive of lower subsequent levels of inhibitory control. Few associations emerged for teacher-child conflict. In a secondary set of models, I found that the temporally-lagged associations between inhibitory control and children's subsequent teacher-child conflict levels were mediated partially by their broad attention-problem behaviors. I discuss the collective findings in terms of way transactional processes between children's attention problems and their teacher-child relationships over time may influence learning.