Browsing by Author "Laine, Julia"

Objectives. There is some evidence about the association between children’s temperamental traits assessed in the beginning of the toddlerhood and later psychiatric disorders but only few studies have the association between infant’s temperamental traits and later psychiatric disorders. Most of the studies have studied the associations between difficult temperamental profile and much less research has been done on the association between infant’s main and lower order temperamental traits and later psychiatric symptoms or disorders. One of the most crucial limitation in previous studies has been the use of the same informant (usually mother) when assessing both infant’s temperament and later psychiatric symptoms. The objective of this study was to investigate the associations between infant’s temperamental traits and later childhood (7-11 years old) psychiatric disorders while controlling for the maternal education, mental disorder and attachment representations. Methods. The data in this study consisted of the children who participated in the Prediction and prevention of preeclampsia and intrauterine growth restriction (PREDO) longitudinal study and whose data about childhood psychiatric disorders and at least one of the main temperament traits in infancy (N=2600). Infant’s temperamental traits were assessed by mothers using the Revised Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ-R) when the child was six months old on average. The data about childhood psychiatric disorder until the year 2016 was gained from the social welfare and healthcare register (Hilmo). Maternal attachment representations towards her infant were evaluated using the Maternal Postpartum Attachment Scale (MPAS) -questionnaire. The associations between infant’s temperamental traits and later childhood psychiatric disorders were examined with Cox Regression analysis. Results and conclusions. Some of the results of this study were in accordance with the previous research and some results were controversial. In contrary with the previous research, there was an association between infant’s higher self-regulation and having any childhood psychiatric disorder, hyperactivity disorder and behavioral disorder. The higher scores of a lower order trait of the self-regulation, the duration of orienting, was associated with any childhood psychiatric disorder or more specifically hyperactivity disorder. High scores of the duration of orienting might imply problems with shifting attention intentionally between objects. In contrary with the previous research, higher negative emotionality did not have an impact on later behavioral or hyperactivity disorders but did have association with later emotional disorder. Higher extraversion was associated with later emotional disorder but not with the behavioral disorder in contrary with the previous research. On the other hand, in accordance with previous research higher extraversion was associated with the higher risk for hyperactivity disorder. In accordance with hypothesis, maternal education, psychiatric disorder and attachment representations did have weakening influence on the association between infant’s temperamental traits and later psychiatric disorders. The results support the notion that the temperamental traits early in life have an impact on psychological development and psychopathology. The results also show the importance of considering the early social and emotional interaction environment when studying early biological temperamental predispositions and its associations with later psychopathology. Avainsanat – Nyckelord – Keywords Infant temperament, Childhood psychiatric disorder