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Children with histories of chronic early maltreatment within a caregiving relationship may develop complex trauma or developmental trauma and suffer from a variety of deficits in many domains. This study explored the effects of complex trauma on the development of 57 children, as measured by the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-II. This is the first descriptive study to report on the significant discrepancies between chronological and developmental ages in adopted and foster children. This study found that adopted and foster children with a psychiatric diagnosis of reactive attachment disorder show developmental delay in the domains of communication, daily living skills, and socialization. The average adaptive behavior composite score for the children in this study yielded a developmental age (age equivalency) of 4.4 years, while the average chronological age was 9.9 years.
The purpose of this article is to describe the effects of complex trauma (also called developmental trauma), which is defined as chronic early maltreatment within a caregiving relationship, on several domains of development, as measured by the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-ll (the Vineland; Sparrow, Cicchetti, & Balla, 2005).
The term complex trauma describes the dual problem of children's exposure to traumatic events and the impact of this exposure on immediate and long-term outcomes. Complex traumatic exposure is a child's experience of multiple traumatic events that occur within the caregiving system - the social environment that is supposed to be the source of safety and stability in a child's life. Typically, complex trauma exposure refers to simultaneous or sequential occurrences of child maltreatment - including emotional abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and witnessing domestic violence that are chronic and begin in early childhood. Moreover, the initial traumatic experiences (e.g., parental neglect and emotional abuse) and the resulting emotional dysregulation, loss of a safe base, loss of direction, and inability to detect or respond to danger cues, often lead to subsequent trauma exposure (e.g., physical and sexual abuse or community violence; Cook, Blaustein, Spinazzola, & Van der Kolk, 2003, p. 5).
The clinical formulation of complex trauma or developmental trauma (Cook, Spinazzola, Ford, Lanktree, Blaustein, Cloître, DeRosa, Hubbard, Kagan, Liautaud, Mallah, Olafson, & Van der Kolk, 2005; Van der Kolk, 2005) describes seven domains of impairment affected by chronic early relational maltreatment: (1) attachment, (2)...