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Understanding Early Risk Factors of Preschool Disruptive Behaviors in a Population-Based Birth Cohort: Why Does
Rene Carbonneau1,2,3, Frank Vitaro2,3,4, Mara Brendgen2,3,5
1Department of Pediatrics, University of Montréal, Montréal, QC H3T 1J7, Canada.
Insights
Early disruptive behaviors (DBs) like hyperactivity-impulsivity, non-compliance, and aggression have distinct risk factors depending on whether they occur alone or together. Understanding these differences is key to early intervention for behavioral problems.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Child Psychiatry
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Disruptive behaviors (DBs) such as hyperactivity-impulsivity (HI), non-compliance (NC), and physical aggression (PA) are often studied individually.
- Comorbidity of DBs reveals distinct risk factor profiles compared to single behaviors.
- Early identification of risk factors for different DB trajectories is crucial for intervention.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare early risk factors for single disruptive behavior (DB) trajectories versus comorbid DB trajectories in preschoolers.
- To investigate risk factors associated with monomorphic (single DB) and polymorphic (multiple DBs) behavioral patterns.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a population-based birth cohort (N=2045) with longitudinal mother ratings of DBs from 1.5 to 5 years.
- Examined pre-conception, pregnancy, perinatal, and early child/family characteristics as risk factors.
- Compared risk factors for high trajectories of single-DBs versus joint-DBs.
Main Results:
- Fewer risk factors were identified for joint-DB high trajectories compared to single-DB high trajectories.
- Children on single-DB trajectories shared only 44.2% of risk factors with those on related joint-DB trajectories.
- Single-DB trajectories shared more risk factors among themselves than joint-DB trajectories did.
Conclusions:
- Disruptive behavior categories encompass distinct subgroups with varying comorbidity patterns and early risk factors.
- Investigating DB comorbidity enhances understanding of etiological processes.
- Targeting comorbidity in early risk factor research can improve upstream prevention of psychopathology.
Background/Objectives:
Research on early risk factors for disruptive behaviors (DBs: hyperactivity-impulsivity/HI, non-compliance/NC, or physical aggression/PA) has predominantly focused on individual DBs in silos (i.e., HI, NC, or PA) or the broader category of externalizing, reporting mostly common risk factors among them. However, studies addressing DB comorbidity, i.e., the simultaneous occurrence of more than one DB, showed differences in risk factors among DB comorbid profiles. Aiming to clarify this discrepancy, the present study compared the early risk factors associated with different longitudinal patterns (i.e., trajectories) of single-DBs (HI, NC, PA) with risk factors associated with monomorbid (HIonly, NConly, PAonly) and comorbid (HI + NC, NC + PA, HI + NC + PA) joint-DBs trajectories during the preschool period.
Methods:
In a population-based birth cohort (N = 2045), parents' pre-conception characteristics, pregnancy and perinatal conditions, and age 5 months child and family characteristics were used to compare children following single-DB and joint-DBs high trajectories to children following low or moderate trajectories. The DB trajectories were derived from mother ratings at ages 1½, 2½, 3½, 4½, and 5 years.
Results:
More risk factors were identified for single-DB high trajectories than for joint-DBs high trajectories. On average, children on a single-DB high trajectory shared only 44.2% of their risk factors with children on a related joint-DBs high trajectory. Moreover, high trajectories of single-DBs shared a larger proportion of their risk factors than did high trajectories of joint-DBs. The findings show that categories of DBs include different subgroups of children based on their comorbidity patterns across DBs, which are differentially linked to early risk factors.
Conclusions:
Addressing comorbidity when investigating early risk factors of preschool DBs may improve our understanding of the etiological processes leading to these distinct but related behaviors and increase our ability to intervene upstream to prevent the earliest forms of potentially life-altering psychopathological conditions.
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