Abstract
Although more prone to psychopathology on average, refugee children differ in their response to adversity. Growing evidence attributes some of these individual differences to varying levels of Environmental Sensitivity - the extent to which children perceive and process contextual influences. However, there is limited knowledge of how Environmental Sensitivity is developmentally influenced, particularly in the refugee setting.
Here, we investigated whether individual-, family- and community-level predictors (psychosocial and genetic) were associated with self-reported Environmental Sensitivity and its subscales (measured using the 12-item Highly Sensitive Child Scale). Participants were a subsample (n = 1,409) from a cohort of Syrian refugee children and their biological mothers, recruited from informal tented settlements in Lebanon. Multivariate adaptive regression spline models were fitted to identify the best selection from over 40 available predictors.
Twelve predictors of Environmental Sensitivity emerged, with the five most commonly selected being maternal behavioural control, human insecurity, positive home experiences, maternal anxiety and child-reported child abuse, the latter three of which were also suggested to predict changes in sensitivity over a 12-month period. Some predictors such as maternal PTSD, war exposure and bullying showed a non-linear, V-shape relationship with sensitivity. All effect sizes, however, were small.
Our findings suggest that both highly supportive and highly adverse contextual factors associate with greater childhood Environmental Sensitivity, in line with current theorising. Despite previous suggestive evidence, we did not find that polygenic scores for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder predicted sensitivity. Further research into predictors of Environmental Sensitivity is encouraged, as this may help with improved assessment of the trait in children.