Viana, Andres G.2019-06-242019-06-24December 22018-12December 2https://hdl.handle.net/10657/4042Background: The present longitudinal investigation examined direct and indirect effects of parental conflict tactics and intimate partner violence (IPV) in the relation between infant temperament and internalizing and externalizing (I/E) symptom trajectories in a diverse sample of children at risk for maltreatment. Method: Participants included 499 mother (36.1% White; 44.3% single; 34.1% employed) and child (51.1% female; 31.7% White) dyads from the LONGitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN; Runyan et al., 1998) dataset. Mothers completed a measure of child temperament between infancy and the child’s fourth birthday and a checklist of I/E symptoms when the child was 6, 8, 10, and 12 years old, respectively. Children completed a self-report measure of IPV exposure at age 6, and mothers reported on parental use of aggressive conflict tactics when the child was 8 years old. Results: Multi-level modeling revealed a significant main effect of temperament on the cubic trajectory of internalizing symptoms. Post-hoc slope probing revealed that children with higher levels of difficult temperament evinced a sharper growth in internalizing symptoms during the study period. Finally, multilevel modeling of externalizing (but not internalizing) symptoms revealed a significant temperament*IPV*linear time interaction, such that low difficult temperament/high IPV children evinced the most pronounced growth in externalizing symptoms over the course of the investigation. Surprisingly, both the high difficult temperament/high IPV and high difficult temperament/low IPV groups experienced sharp decreases in externalizing symptoms over the study period. Conclusion: Findings underscore the role of difficult temperament and IPV on the trajectory of I/E symptoms, yet also highlight the need for a more comprehensive assessment of temperament and a multimethod approach to IPV to more clearly delineate the specific role of these variables above and beyond relevant covariates.application/pdfengThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).Childhood PsychopathologyIntimate partner violenceTemperament2019-06-24Thesisborn digital