Paediatrics (RCH) - Research Publications

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    Impact of early brain insult on the development of social competence
    Anderson, V ; Greenham, M ; Ryan, N ; Beauchamp, M ; McDonald, S (Routledge, 2021)
    There is growing interest in the social consequences of paediatric brain insult. While current evidence is relatively scarce, findings consistently demonstrate that brain injury in early life confers an elevated risk of social dysfunction across a range of dimensions – social adjustment, social interaction and participation and social cognition. Interactions across these domains and their impact on the child’s other skills is poorly understood. In addition, it appears that the injury-related risk factors that are predictive of cognitive and physical outcomes from early brain insult (injury severity, lesion location, age at insult) are less reliable indicators of social outcomes. Rather, pre-insult child status and environmental factors play a larger role. In particular, social context, family function, child temperament and adjustment to brain insult are all important in determining the child’s social recovery and outcome. Emerging findings from longitudinal studies of childhood ABI show great promise and will facilitate the design of evidence-based interventions in this field. Further, the advent of recent theoretical models of social function and early brain insult, integrating social neuroscience, developmental and developmental psychopathology literatures, provide a strong bio-psychosocial framework for future research.