ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

DEVELOPMENTAL SEQUELAE OF CAREGIVER’S STRESSFUL POLICE CONTACT AMONG MINORITY

CHILDREN STARTING SCHOOL

Shurita Thomas-Tate T imothy K . Daugherty Missouri State University

Employing an existing database of African American and bira- cial children entering metropolitan Detroit schools, we examined children o f caregivers with and without reported stressful police contact. As anticipated, young children of caregivers with recent stressful police contact appear to suffer cognitive performance dec­ rements on a nonverbal test and are rated more negatively on sev­ eral behavioral items. The small size and specificity of the sam­ ple, along with the correlational nature o f the analysis, lead to cautious interpretations, but the results encourage future research.

A m ericans, in general, tend to hold pos­ itive views o f the police. The m ajority - up to nearly tw o-thirds — reports high confi­ dence in and satisfaction with local police (Jones, 2015; Schafer, H uebner & Bynum, 2003). However, perspectives becom e more diverse as diverse populations are considered. Policing confidence and satisfaction have re­ cently fallen to 52% — and, am ong African A m ericans, the figure tends to be significantly low er than the rest o f the population (Jones, 2015). A num ber o f variables appear to affect perceptions o f police, including race, income, age, gender, neighborhood, m edia, and con­ tact (G abbidon & Higgins, 2009; Gibbidon, H iggins & Potter, 2011; Schafer, H uebner & Bynum , 2003). Negative perceptions o f po­ lice are m ore likely among poor, black, male, young people living in high-crim e neighbor­ hoods and having frequent personal contact w ith police. Additionally, negative percep­ tions o f police are m ore likely during and im m ediately after sensationalized coverage

o f negative police contact on the news (Cher- mak, M cGarrell, & Gruenwald, 2006).

Young African A m erican males report m ore frequent police contact and more neg­ ative perceptions o f police than other demo­ graphic groups (Schafer et al., 2003). This frequent contact w ith the police, often per­ ceived as harassm ent and/or excessive police attention, contributes to negative attitudes. The phenom enon know n as “driving w hile black” (the potential for police to use m inor traffic violations as a pretext for surveilling A frican Am ericans; Lundm an & Kaufman, 2003) and stop-and-frisk laws disproportion­ ately affect young African A m erican males (Gelman, Fagan, and K iss, 2007).

Less frequent contact however, does not seem to preclude negative attitudes about police am ong African Americans. In a recent poll o f 854 A frican A m ericans from across the U nited States, Gabbidon et al. (2011) exam ined the relationship o f gender w ith perceptions o f unfair police treatment. W hile

257

258 / Education Vol. 137 No. 3

African American women were less likely to report unfair treatment than men, they yet reported what appears to be an elevated per­ ception o f unfair treatment.

Direct contact with the police is not the only type o f contact associated with negative attitudes about the police. Based on Gallup poll data, Gabbidon and Higgins (2006) found evidence for negative attitudes about police arising from “vicarious” negative encounters — witnessing community incidents and expo­ sure to media accounts. Similarly, Chemmak and colleagues (2006) examined public opin­ ion about police before and after high-profile police misconduct trials and found the impact o f media coverage appeared to interact with race, with African Americans more likely to perceive police as harassing following media coverage o f a high profile event.

Stressftd experiences in families can negatively affect children’s health, physical growth, social-emotional development, cog­ nitive-linguistic development, and academic achievement (Cmic, Gaze, & Hoffman, 2005) . The short-term and long-term conse­ quences o f stress might not simply differ by degree. Young children may develop short­ term adaptations in response to stress, while suffering long-term costs in development (Coley, Lynch, & Kull, 2015; Cmic et al., 2005; Thompson, 2014).

Recent research regarding the potential connection, evident particularly among African Americans, between exposure to community stress and lower performance on standardized tests (e.g., Sharkey et al., 2013) led us to revisit data from a multiyear, language-development project focused on African-American children entering school in metropolitan Detroit (Craig & Washington, 2006) . The original project generated useful findings in a number o f domains (Craig & Washington, 2000; Craig & Washington, 2002; Washington & Craig, 2004). Buried in an aggregated measure o f family stress was an

item that asked caregivers to indicate whether the following had occurred in the prior two years and the degree o f stress associated with it: “Being stopped/harassed by the police.”

The purpose o f the present study is to explore the possibility that the children o f caregivers with recent stressful police con­ tact may suffer cognitive performance dec­ rements. Using a robust, existing database o f African American and biracial children entering metropolitan Detroit schools, we expected children o f police-stressed caregiv­ ers to be described more negatively and to perform more poorly on an unbiased test of cognitive functioning.

Method Participants were 96 children residing in

and starting school in metropolitan Detroit. The sample included preschool (79) and kindergarten (17) children who had recently been flagged by a language screening; 47 males and 49 females, with an average age o f 4.16 years (SD = 0.61 years), participated following informed consent by their parents or guardians. The lower-to-middle socioeco­ nomic class sample included 84 students who identified as African American and 12 who identified as biracial.

fn addition to standardized tests admin­ istered to the children, interviews were con­ ducted with the primary caregivers. The struc­ tured interview included over 200 questions covering topics like family structure, stress­ ors, finances, child care, and the development o f the child participating in the study. While a conversational flow was sought to encourage openness, standard response options were ul­ timately coded. Interview items related to the child’s present functioning were rated by the caregiver on a scale from 1 (“below average”) through 4 (“average”) to 7 (“above average”).

Stressful Police Contact was measured by asking caregivers to indicate whether, in the last two years, they had been “stopped/

Developmental Sequelae of Caregiver’s Stressful Police Contact / 259

harassed by the police.” Those reporting such experience rated the stress on a scale from 1 (“not at all stressful”) to 5 (“very stressful”). From this item, two groups were formed: No Stressful Police Contact (n = 72) and Stressful Police Contact (n = 12), with the latter group comprised o f those who rated the stress at 4 or 5.

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test— Third Edition (PPVT-III; Dunn & Dunn, 1997) was administered as a measure of receptive vocabulary, and the Kaufman Non­ verbal Scale (KNVS; Kaufman & Kaufman, 1983) was used to provide a nonverbal mea­ sure o f cognitive ability. Based on six mental processing subtests, the KNVS is thought to assess processing and cognitive ability without biases related to cultural or linguistic background (Willson, Nolan, Reynolds, & Kamphaus, 1989). Both the PPVT-III and the KNVS yield standard scores, with a mean o f 100 and standard deviation o f 15.

Results

From the total sample of 96 ,2 4 caregivers reported having been stopped/harassed by the police within the last two years, and 12 o f those caregivers rated the experience as high­ ly stressful. While not rating their children differently on most items related to current functioning (p’s > .05), the Stressful Police Contact caregiver group rated their children as being less able to follow directions (t (82) = 1.97,/? = .027), pay attention (t (82) = 1.70,/? = .046), switch tasks (t (82) = 2.13, p = .018), and show concern for others (t (82) = 2.14, p = .018) than did caregivers in the No Stress- fill Police Contact group. On no item, did the Stressful Police Contact group appear to have an advantage.

In terms o f measured intellectual function­ ing, the children with caregivers in the SPC group ( M = 89.00) did not differ from the children with caregivers in the NSPC group ( M = 92.50) in terms o f PPVT-III scores (l

(82) = 1.00,/? = .158). However, the children with caregivers in the SPC group ( M= 89.08) differed significantly from the children with caregivers in the NSPC group (M = 98.17) in terms o f the Kaufman Nonverbal Scale (t (82) = 2.69,/? = .004).

Discussion

As expected, children o f caregivers with recent stressful police contact appear to suf­ fer cognitive performance decrements and are rated more negatively on several behav­ ioral items. The existing database o f African American and biracial children entering metropolitan Detroit schools provided an opportunity to test the reasonableness o f the hypothesis that adult-level stress involving police might somehow influence children in significant ways. These findings support fu­ ture investigations using larger samples from multiple sites.

That the children did not differ in receptive vocabulary (PPVT-III scores) may be related to relatively more limited variability in this sample, which was distinguished by having already failed a screen for language problems. The SPC group had below-average PPVT-III scores, but - because o f the way the sample was formed - so did the NSPC group. The nonverbal measure o f cognitive functioning, however, may have bypassed the language difficulties and provided a better measure of cognitive development for this sample.

The current study has a number o f limita­ tions, and results should be considered with caution. Stressful Police Contact was not di­ rectly observed and documented; rather, the variable was measured through retrospective self-report, which is potentially subject to a number o f imprecisions and biases (Schwarz, 1999). Furthermore, the correlational nature o f the design makes directional causation speculative. While it is possible that stress leads to cognitive and behavioral impairment, it is also possible that cognitive and behavioral

260 / Education Vol. 137 No. 3

impairment led both to negative community interactions for the caregiver and poor test performance for the children. Future research, with a longitudinal component and additional adult measures (caregiver functioning was not measured in this study), can help clarify the nature of causation (if any).

The small sample size resulted in reduced power, so a higher hurdle was established for statistical significance; still, the size and specificity of the sample (limited to one major city) make generalizations more difficult and argue for future research employing data from multiple cities. If follow-up studies yield sim­ ilar findings, then the health and development of the next generation becomes an additional reason to support positive policing practices and to enhance caregiver coping resources - particularly in communities at highest risk.

Author Note

This investigation was supported by grant no R01DC04273-01 from the National Insti­ tutes of Health, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (PI - Ju­ lie Washington).

References Chermak, S., McGarrell, E., & Gruenewald, J. (2006).

Media coverage o f police misconduct and attitudes toward police. Policing: An International Journal o f Police Strategies & Management, 29(2), 261-281.

Coley, R. L., Lynch, A. D., & Kull, M. (2015). Early ex­ posure to environmental chaos and children’s phys­ ical and mental health. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 32, 94-104.

Craig, Holly K., and Julie A. Washington. “An assess­ ment battery for identifying language impairments in African American children.” Journal o f Speech, Lan­ guage, an d Hearing Research 43.2 (2000): 366-379.

Craig, H. K., & Washington, J.A. (2002). Oral language expectations for African-American preschoolers and kindergartners. American Journal o f Speech-Lan­ guage Pathology, //(February), 59-70.

Craig, H. K., & Washington, J. A. (2006). M alik goes to school: Examining the language skills o f African American students fro m preschool-5th grade. Psy­ chology Press.

Cmic, K. A., Gaze, C., & Hoffman, C. (2005). Cumu­ lative parenting stress across the preschool period: Relations to maternal parenting and child behaviour at age 5. Infant and Child Development.

Gabbindon, S.L. & Higgins, G.E. (2009). The role o f race/ethnicity and race relations on public opinion related to treatment o f Blacks by the police. Police Quarterly, 72(1), 102-115.

Gabbidon, S. L., Higgins, G. E., & Potter, H. (2011). Race, Gender, and the Perception o f Recently Expe­ riencing Unfair Treatment by the Police: Exploratory Results From an All-Black Sample. Criminal Justice Review, 36(1), 5-21.

Gelman, A., Fagan, J., & Kiss, A. (2007). An Analysis o f the New York City Police Department’s “Stop- and-Frisk” Policy in the Context o f Claims o f Racial Bias. Journal o f the American Statistical Associa­ tion, 702(479), 813-823.

Jones, J.M. (2015). In U.S., confidence in police low­ est in 22 years. Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/ poll/183704/confidence-police-lowest-years.aspx

Lundman, R. J., & Kaufman, R. L. (2003). Driving while black: Effects o f race, ethnicity, and gender on citizen self-reports o f traffic stops and police actions. Crimi­ nology, 47(1), 195-220.

Schafer, J. A., Huebner, B. M., & Bynum, T. S. (2003). Citizen perceptions o f police services: Race, neigh­ borhood context, and community policing. Police Quarterly, 6(4), 440-468.

Schwarz, N. (1999). Self-reports: How the questions shape the answers. American Psychologist, 54(2), 93-105.

Sharkey, P. T., Tirado-Strayer, N., Papachristos, A. V., & Raver, C. C. (2012). The effect o f local violence on children’s attention and impulse control. American Journal o f Public Health, 702(12), 2287-2293.

Thompson, R. A. (2014). Stress and child development. Future o f Children, 24(1), 41—59.

Washington, J. A., & Craig, H. K. (2004). A language screening protocol for use with young African Amer­ ican children in urban settings. American Journal o f Speech-Language Pathology, 73(4), 329-340.

Copyright of Education is the property of Project Innovation, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.