This symposium brings together findings from different studies conducted by our team, which sought to examine the effects of early parental deprivation and institutionalization on children's development from 0 to 6 years of age, based on an ecological model and a multilevel approach, and considering the contribution from distal to more proximal relational processes (e.g., early familial risks before institutionalization, quality of institutional care, quality of child-caregiver interactions), and biological processes (neurocognitive processes, candidate genes). The present symposium will be focused on attachment disturbances, and the first paper will illustrate and discuss the conceptual perspective, methodological issues, and social-political implications from our larger research project. The three following papers will present and discuss data. More precisely, in the second oral presentation, the associations between attachment disturbances and other developmental outcomes (e.g., emotional/behavioral problems) will be presented, and additionally, the environmental (e.g., pre-institutionalized family risks) and relational predictors (e.g., quality of caregivers’ interactive behaviors) of the above outcomes will be explored.  (ii) in the third communication, we further investigate neurobiological structural and functional MRI markers underlying the emergence of indiscriminate behavior in institutionally-reared children, and finally, (iii) in the fourth oral presentation the indiscriminate behavior will be examined based on a gene-environment interaction approach, aiming to uncover the effect of single nucleotide polymorphisms in genes involved in neurotransmission and synaptic plasticity.

Isabel Soares is professor of the School of Psychology at the University of Minho, Portugal, past-president (2013-2016), and the coordinator of the Development and Psychopathology Research Unit within the Psychology Research Center. Her research expertise lies in the area of developmental psychopathology, attachment, and parenting, focused on attachment disturbances and other psychopathological conditions in institutionally reared children and in children living in high-risk families, considering the interaction between genes and environment and the role of neural activity. She is co-author of several articles published in international peer-reviewed journals.