• Four profiles best explained person-centered variation in developmental skills during early childhood screening in a large mid-western city. • The most common profiles included children with high performance (51%) or average (29%) scoring patterns on indicators of cognitive, verbal, and social-emotional skills. • Children with early childhood experiences of homelessness and Child Protective Services involvement were more likely to be in profiles where they systematically performed below average on developmental screening. • Despite early childhood experiences of adversity, many children still demonstrated resilience and were performing in the average to above average range. Developmental challenges often emerge early in childhood. Many states require that all children participate in early childhood screening during their preschool years (3 to 6 years old) to determine early need for intervention services before entering school. The current study included 496 children who participated in early childhood screening in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We took a person-centered approach to identify whether there were meaningful profiles of early childhood developmental skills. Results indicated that four profiles best described this sample, with most children characterized as having high (51%) and average (29%) ranges of functioning across developmental skills. The other two profiles consisted of children functioning either low (12%) or low with specific challenges in cognition, language, gross motor, and social-emotional skills (8%). Given that the state of Minnesota has some of the most pronounced academic achievement gaps across race, income, and housing status in the United States, this study also evaluated how certain early childhood indicators of risk contribute to the probability of having each developmental profile. Black race, experiences of homelessness, and child protective services involvement predicted a higher likelihood of being in low performing profiles compared to children in the high performance profile. However, children with multiple risk factors were present in all profiles, suggesting that some children demonstrated resilience despite exposure to risk. Implications of the profile results for screening and interventions services are discussed.
Palmer et al. (Thu,) studied this question.