title: The academic consequences of early childhood problem behaviors.
abstract: Social/emotional skills in early childhood are associated with education, labor market, and family formation outcomes throughout the life course. One explanation for these associations is that poor social/emotional skills in early childhood interfere with the development of cognitive skills. In this paper, we use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N=2302) to examine how the timing of social/emotional skills-measured as internalizing, externalizing, and attention problem behaviors in early childhood-is associated with cognitive test scores in middle childhood. Results show that externalizing problems at age 3 and attention problems at age 5, as well as externalizing and attention problems at both ages 3 and 5, are associated with poor cognitive development in middle childhood, net of a wide array of control variables and prior test scores. Surprisingly, maternal engagement at age five does not mediate these associations.
authors.affiliation: University of California, Irvine, United States. Electronic address: kristin.turney@uci.edu.
authors.forename: Kristin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Turney
authors.affiliation: Princeton University, United States.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: McLanahan
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D001288:Attention; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000150:complications; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000150:complications; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D004644:Emotions; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D000066553:Problem Behavior; D066107:Social Skills
keywords: Child school achievement; Early childhood; Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study; Life course