Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development (MONO) – serie
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29 produkter
29 produkter
Del 3 - Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development (MONO)
I Remember Me
Mnemonic Self-Reference Effects in Preschool Children
Häftad, Engelska, 2011
492 kr
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It is well established that children recognize themselves in mirrors by the end of infancy, showing awareness of the self as an object in the environment. However, the cognitive impact of objective self-awareness requires further elucidation. This gap in the literature is addressed in a series of 7 experiments exploring the role of self in 3- and 4-year-olds' event memory. A mnemonic bias for self-relevant material has been described in adults. This effect is thought to be based on the organizational properties of a highly elaborated self-concept, and so offers a clear route to study the child's developing sense of self. However, very few studies have investigated the ontogeny of this effect. New evidence is provided to suggest that preschool children, like adults, show a mnemonic advantage for material that has been physically linked with the self through performance of a depicted action (Experiment 1). Moreover, 3- and 4-year olds show a bias for material that has been visually and linguistically processed with the self-image (Experiments 2, 3, 4), and material that has been socio-cognitively linked to the self in terms of ownership (Experiments 5, 6, 7). The data imply that both bottom-up (kinesthetic feedback, self-concept) and top-down (attention) aspects of self reflection may play a supporting role in early event memory, perhaps representing a nascent form of autobiographical processing. Importantly, this research highlights a promising methodology for elucidating the executive role of the self in cognition. Following William James's (1890) influential conception of the self, it seems that in typical development, "I" is primed to remember "me."
516 kr
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This monograph reviews the research, practice, and policy literatures pertaining to children without permanent parents, most of whom spend their early months or years in institutions.
How Socialization Happens on the Ground
Narrative Practices as Alternate Socializing Pathways in Taiwanese and European-American Families
Häftad, Engelska, 2012
533 kr
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This monograph builds upon our cumulative efforts to investigate personal storytelling as a medium of socialization in two disparate cultural worlds. Drawing upon interdisciplinary fields of study that take a discourse-centered approach to socialization, we combined ethnography, longitudinal home observations, and micro-level analysis of everyday talk to study this problem in Taiwanese families in Taipei and European-American families in Longwood, Chicago. Comparative analyses of 192 hours, of video-recorded observations revealed that convserational stories of young children's past experiences occurred in both sites at remarkably similar rates and continued apace across the age span, yielding nearly 900 narrations. Thse and other similarities coexisted with differences in culturall salient interpretive frameworks and participant roles, forming distinct socializating pathways. The Taipei families enacted a didactic framework, prolifically and elaborately narrating and correcting children's misdeeds. These findings open a window on how socialization operates on the ground: Socialization through personal storytelling is a highly dynamic process in which redundancy and variation are conjoined and children participate as active, creative, affectively engaged meaning makers.
Del 1 - Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development (MONO)
Physiological Measures of Emotion From a Developmental Perspective
State of the Science
Häftad, Engelska, 2012
549 kr
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Beauty has a well-documented impact on labor market outcomes with both legal and policy implications. This monograph investigated whether this stratification is rooted in earlier developmental experiences. Specifically, we explored how high schools' dual roles as contexts of social relations and academic progress contributed to the long-term socioeconomic advantages of being physically attractive. Integrating theories from multiple disciplines, the conceptual model of this study contends that physically attractive youths' greater social integration and lesser social stigma help them accumulate psychosocial resources that support their academic achievement while also selecting them into social activities that distract from good grades. A mixed-methods design, combining statistical analyses of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health and qualitative analyses of a single high school, supported and expanded this model. The data revealed that the benefits of attractiveness flowed through greater social integration but were partially offset by social distractions, especially romantic/sexual partnerships and alcohol-related problems. Interview and ethnographic data further revealed that adolescents themselves understood how physical attractiveness could lead to favorable treatment by teachers and classmates while also enticing youth to emphasize socializing and dating, even when the latter took time from other activities (like studying) and marginalized some classmates. These patterns, in turn, predicted education, work, family, and mental health trajectories in young adulthood. The results of this interdisciplinary, theoretically grounded, mixed methods study suggest that adolescence may be a critical period in stratification by physical appearance and that the underlying developmental phenomena during this period are complex and often internally contradictory. The monograph concludes with discussion of theoretical and policy implications and recommendations for future developmental research.
Del 2 - Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development (MONO)
Emotions Are a Window Into One's Heart
A Qualitative Analysis of Parental Beliefs About Children's Emotions Across Three Ethnic Groups
Häftad, Engelska, 2012
533 kr
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The main goal of this Monograph is to understand parents' beliefs about the role of emotions in the family and how cultural or ethnic background may influence those beliefs. Implications of parental beliefs for emotion socialization theory and future research, as well as limitations, are discussed.
492 kr
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The overarching goal of the present study was to trace the development of mirror self-recognition (MSR), as an index oftoddlers’ sense of themselves and others as autonomous intentional agents, in different sociocultural environments.
What Makes a Difference
Early Head Start Evaluation Findings in a Developmental Context
Häftad, Engelska, 2013
533 kr
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A randomized trial evaluated the efficacy of 17 Early Head Start (EHS) programs. 3,001 low-income families with a pregnant women or an infant under 12 months were assigned to a treatment or control group. Data were collected when children were 1, 2, 3, and 5 years old. Analyses examined (1) impacts at ages 2 and 3 (while services were being offered) and at age 5, and (2) contributions of early education experiences across children's first 5 years of life.Child outcomes included cognition, language, attention, behavior problems, and health; maternal outcomes included parenting, mental health, and employment
Emergence of a Temporally Extended Self and Factors That Contribute to Its Development
From Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives
Häftad, Engelska, 2013
494 kr
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The validity of the Delayed Self-Recognition (DSR) test was verified by comparing the performance of 57 children on the DSR test to their performance on a meta-representational task (modified false belief task) and to a task that was essentially the same as the DSR test but was specifi cally designed to rely on the capacity to entertain secondary representations (i.e., surprise body task). Longitudinal testing of the children showed that at the mental age (MA) of 2.5 years they failed the DSR test, despite training them to understand the intended functions of the medium used in the DSR test; whereas, with training, children at the MA of 3.0 and 3.5 years exhibited DSR. Children at the MA of 4 years exhibited DSR without any training. Finally, results suggest that children’s meta-representational ability was the only factor that contributed to the prediction of successful performance on the DSR test, and thus to the emergence of the temporally extended self (TES). Furthermore, prospective longitudinal data revealed that caregiver conversational style was the only factor that contributed to the prediction of level of training required to pass the DSR test. That is, children of low-elaborative caregivers required signifi cantly more training to pass the DSR test than children of high-elaborative caregivers, indicating that children who received more elaborative conversational input from their caregivers had a more advanced understanding of their TES.
454 kr
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Children with incarcerated parents are at risk for a variety of problematic outcomes, yet research has rarely examined protective factors or resilience processes that might mitigate such risk in this population. In this volume, we present findings from fi ve new studies that focus on child- or family-level resilience processes in children with parents currently or recently incarcerated in jail or prison. In the fi rst study, empathic responding is examined as a protective factor against aggressive peer relations for 210 elementary school age children of incarcerated parents. The second study further examines socially aggressive behaviors with peers, with a focus on teasing and bullying, in a sample of 61 children of incarcerated mothers. Emotion regulation is examined as a possible protective factor. The third study contrasts children’s placement with maternal grandmothers versus other caregivers in a sample of 138 mothers incarcerated in a medium security state prison. The relation between a history of positive attachments between mothers and grandmothers and the current cocaregiving alliance are of particular interest. The fourth study examines coparenting communication in depth on the basis of observations of 13 families with young children whose mothers were recently released from jail. Finally, in the fi fth study, the proximal impacts of a parent management training intervention on individual functioning and family relationships are investigated in a diverse sample of 359 imprisoned mothers and fathers. Taken together, these studies further our understanding of resilience processes in children of incarcerated parents and their families and set the groundwork for further research on child development and family resilience within the context of parental involvement in the criminal justice system.
National Institutes of Health Toolbox Cognition Battery (NIH Toolbox CB)
Validation for Children Between 3 and 15 Years
Häftad, Engelska, 2013
454 kr
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This monograph presents the pediatric portion of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Toolbox Cognition Battery (CB) of the NIH Toolbox for the Assessment of Neurological and Behavioral Function. The NIH Toolbox is an initiative of the Neuroscience Blueprint, a collaborative framework through which 16 NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offi ces jointly support neuroscience-related research, to accelerate discoveries and reduce the burden of nervous system disorders. The CB is one of four modules that measure cognitive, emotional, sensory, and motor health across the lifespan. The CB is unique in its continuity across childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, and old age, and in order to help create a common currency among disparate studies, it is also available at low cost to researchers for use in large-scale longitudinal and epidemiologic studies. Chapter 1 describes the evolution of the CB; methods for selecting cognitive subdomains and instruments; the rationale for test design; and a validation study in children and adolescents, ages 3 to 15 years. Subsequent chapters feature detailed discussions of each test measure and its psychometric properties (Chapters 2–6), the factor structure of the test battery (Chapter 7), the effects of age and education on composite test scores (Chapter 8), and a final summary and discussion (Chapter 9). As the chapters in this monograph demonstrate, the CB has excellent psychometric properties, and the validation study provided evidence for the increasing differentiation of cognitive abilities with age.
Family Life Project
An Epidemiological and Developmental Study of Young Children Living in Poor Rural Communities
Häftad, Engelska, 2013
467 kr
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About 20% of children in the United States live in rural communities, with child poverty rates higher and geographic isolation from resources greater than in urban communities. Yet, there have been surprisingly few studies of children living in rural communities, especially poor rural communities. The Family Life Project helped fill this gap by using an epidemiological design to recruit and study a representative sample of every baby born to a mother who resided in one of six poor rural counties over a one year period, oversampling for poverty and African American. 1,292 children were followed from birth to 36 months of age. This study used a cumulative risk framework to examine the relation between social risk and children's executive functioning, language development, and behavioral competence at 36 months. Using both the Family Process Model of development and the Family Investment Model of development, observed parenting was examined as a mediator and/or moderator of this relationship. Results suggested that cumulative risk predicted all three major domains of child outcomes and that positive and negative parenting and maternal language complexity were mediators of these relations. Maternal positive parenting was found to be a buffer for the most risky families in predicting behavioral competence. In a final model using both family process and investment measures, there was evidence of mediation but with little evidence of the specificity of parenting for particular outcomes. Discussion focused the implications for possible intervention strategies that might be effective in maximizing the early development of these children.
Physical Attractiveness and the Accumulation of Social and Human Capital in Adolescence and Young Adulthood
Assets and Distractions
Häftad, Engelska, 2014
467 kr
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Beauty has a well-documented impact on labor market outcomes with both legal and policy implications. This monograph investigated whether this stratification is rooted in earlier developmental experiences. Specifically, we explored how high schools' dual roles as contexts of social relations and academic progress contributed to the long-term socioeconomic advantages of being physically attractive. Integrating theories from multiple disciplines, the conceptual model of this study contends that physically attractive youths' greater social integration and lesser social stigma help them accumulate psychosocial resources that support their academic achievement while also selecting them into social activities that distract from good grades. A mixed-methods design, combining statistical analyses of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health and qualitative analyses of a single high school, supported and expanded this model. The data revealed that the benefits of attractiveness flowed through greater social integration but were partially offset by social distractions, especially romantic/sexual partnerships and alcohol-related problems. Interview and ethnographic data further revealed that adolescents themselves understood how physical attractiveness could lead to favorable treatment by teachers and classmates while also enticing youth to emphasize socializing and dating, even when the latter took time from other activities (like studying) and marginalized some classmates. These patterns, in turn, predicted education, work, family, and mental health trajectories in young adulthood. The results of this interdisciplinary, theoretically grounded, mixed methods study suggest that adolescence may be a critical period in stratification by physical appearance and that the underlying developmental phenomena during this period are complex and often internally contradictory. The monograph concludes with discussion of theoretical and policy implications and recommendations for future developmental research.
Children's Understanding of Death
Toward a Contextualized and Integrated Account
Häftad, Engelska, 2014
481 kr
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In this monograph we (1) provide an account of young children's socialization with respect to death and (2) develop a conception of children’s understanding of death that encompasses affective and cognitive dimensions. Conducted in a small city in the Midwest, the project involved several component studies employing quantitative and qualitative methods. Middle-class, European American children (3-6 years, N = 101) were interviewed about their cognitive/affective understandings of death; their parents (N = 71) completed questionnaires about the children's experiences and their own beliefs and practices. Other data included ethnographic observations, interviews, focus groups, and analyses of children's books. Parents and teachers shared a dominant folk theory, believing that children should be shielded from death because they lack the emotional and cognitive capacity to understand or cope with death. Even the youngest children knew basic elements of the emotional script for death, a script that paralleled messages available across socializing contexts. Similarly, they showed considerable understanding of the subconcepts of death, providing additional evidence that young children's cognitive understanding is more advanced than previously thought, and contradicting the dominant folk theory held by most parents. Although children's default model of death was biological, many children and parents used coexistence models, mixing scientific and religious elements. A preliminary study of Mexican American families (children: N = 27, parents: N = 17) cast the foregoing fi ndings in relief, illustrating a different set of socializing beliefs and practices. Mexican American children’s understanding of death differed from their European American counterparts' in ways that mirrored these differences.
Emergent Executive
A Dynamic Field Theory of the Development of Executive Function
Häftad, Engelska, 2016
440 kr
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Executive function (EF) is a central aspect of cognition that undergoes significant changes in early childhood. Changes in EF in early childhood are robustly predictive of academic achievement and general quality of life measures later in adulthood. We present a dynamic neural field (DNF) model that provides a process-based account of behavior and developmental change in a key task used to probe the early development of executive function—the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task. In the DCCS, children must flexibly switch from sorting cards either by shape or color to sorting by the other dimension. Typically, 3-year-olds, but not 5-year-olds, lack the flexibility to do so and perseverate on the first set of rules when instructed to switch. Using the DNF model, we demonstrate how rule-use and behavioral flexibility come about through a form of dimensional attention. Further, developmental change is captured by increasing the robustness and precision of dimensional attention. Note that although this enables the model to effectively switch tasks, the dimensional attention system does not “know” the details of task-specific performance. Rather, correct performance emerges as a property of system-wide interactions. We show how this captures children’s behavior in quantitative detail across 14 versions of the DCCS task. Moreover, we successfully test a set of novel predictions with 3-year-old children from a version of the task not explained by other theories.
Adult Attachment Interview
Psychometrics, Stability and Change From Infancy, and Developmental Origins
Häftad, Engelska, 2014
447 kr
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Bowlby's (1969/1982) attachment theory has inspired decades of empirical work focusing on antecedents and consequences of variation in attachment security across the lifespan. However, significant questions remain about individual differences in adult attachment and their developmental origins. This book address these issues, reporting analyses based on Adult Attachment Interviews (AAIs; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985) collected at age 18 years from the largest longitudinal sample of its kind (N = 857)—participants who had been enrolled in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development from birth through to 15 years.Part 1 provides confirmatory evidence that relatively independent AAI dismissing and preoccupied states of mind—along with variation in inferred maternal and paternal experience—capture the full range of participants’ AAI discourse. Taxometric analyses demonstrated that individual differences are more accurately represented dimensionally than categorically. Part 2 reports evidence of weak but statistically significant stability in attachment from infancy through late adolescence, and lawful sources of continuity and change over time—maternal sensitivity, father absence, paternal depression, and negative life events. A specific focus on individuals who described below-average childhood experiences in the AAI but did so in a coherent manner (i.e., "earned-secures") replicated evidence that they actually received average or better parental care, but also experienced significant family stressors in childhood. Additional analyses suggested theory-consistent developmental antecedents of the four AAI dimensions (i.e., dismissing, preoccupied, inferred maternal and paternal experiences). Together, these results represent a significant step forward in our understanding of adult attachment and its origins.
Relation of Childhood Physical Activity to Brain Health, Cognition, and Scholastic Achievement
Häftad, Engelska, 2014
467 kr
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There is a growing public health burden of inactivity in industrialized nations. In recent years, children have become increasingly inactive, leading to concomitant increases in the prevalence of being overweight and unfit. Inactivity during childhood has implications for the prevalence of several chronic diseases (e.g., obesity, type 2 diabetes) observed in adulthood. These 'adult-onset' diseases have also become more prevalent during childhood and adolescence, exacerbating the need to develop novel treatments that provide enduring benefit by altering the chronic and oftentimes debilitating course of these lifestyle diseases. Of further interest is the absence of public health concern for the effect of inactivity on brain health and cognition. It is curious that this has not emerged as a larger societal issue, given its obvious relation to childhood obesity and other inactivity-related disorders that have captured the United States and other industrialized nations. Many schools have minimized physical activity opportunities despite a growing literature indicating their benefits to cognition and learning. Such educational practices are increasing in popularity due to budgetary constraints and an increased emphasis placed upon student performance on standardized tests. It is counterintuitive that spending less time in the classroom and more time engaged in physical activities might improve learning, yet research is consonant in suggesting that physical activity benefits brain health and cognition. Accordingly, this monograph describes a body of research, which examines the complex relationship of physical activity to cognitive and brain health from a translational perspective, with the goal of maximizing effective function across the lifespan.
447 kr
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The growing multidisciplinary literature on sleep and development needs to be integrated to yield organizing principles and conceptual frameworks researchers can use to defi ne and measure key constructs. This Monograph has three major aims: to present contemporary conceptual and methodological issues that need to be considered to integrate knowledge of sleep and child development across multiple disciplines, and accelerate the pace and enhance the quality of research (Chapter II); to discuss various sleep methodologies including their advantages and disadvantages (Chapter III); and to provide examples of longitudinal studies, which are needed in this developing area of inquiry, that demonstrate linkages between various sleep parameters and child development across multiple domains (Chapters IV through X). Chapter I introduces the main objectives of the volume, highlights the importance of sleep for child development, and presents a guiding framework for understanding the multiple influences on child sleep. Chapter II summarizes the outcomes of an SRCD sponsored forum on sleep and development that included scholars from multiple disciplines and presents guiding recommendations for research priorities. Themes include biobehavioral mechanisms, family processes, and socio-cultural factors; in addition, open questions and best practices in research design and statistics are discussed. Chapter III presents various sleep assessment methodologies including their advantages and disadvantages. Empirical studies (Chapters IV through X) were solicited from researchers in the fi eld; have a longitudinal element in their designs; demonstrate linkages between various sleep parameters and other key developmental domains; and use objective assessments of sleep duration or quality of "typically" developing children. Chapter XI summarizes key aspects of the various studies presented in this monograph and provides directions for this trans-disciplinary area of research.
Role of Parents in the Ontogeny of Achievement-Related Motivation and Behavioral Choices
Häftad, Engelska, 2015
428 kr
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Parents believe what they do matters. But, how does it matter? How do parents’ beliefs about their children early on translate into the choices those children make as adolescents? The Eccles' expectancy-value model asserts that parents' beliefs about their children during childhood predict adolescents' achievement-related choices through a sequence of processes that operate in a cumulative, cascading fashion over time. Specifi cally, parents' beliefs predict parents' behaviors that predict their children's motivational beliefs. Those beliefs predict children's subsequent choices. Using data from the Childhood and Beyond Study (92% European American; N 723), we tested these predictions in the activity domains of sports, instrumental music, mathematics, and reading across a 12-year period. In testing these predictions, we looked closely at the idea of reciprocal infl uences and at the role of child gender as a moderator. The cross-lagged models generally supported the bidirectional influences described in Eccles' expectancy-value model. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated that: (a) these relations were stronger in the leisure domains than in the academic domains, (b) these relations did not consistently vary based on youth gender, (c) parents were stronger predictors of their children's beliefs than vice versa, and (d) adolescents' beliefs were stronger predictors of their behaviors than the reverse. The findings presented in this monograph extend our understanding of the complexity of families, developmental processes that unfold over time, and the extent to which these processes are universal across domains and child gender.
467 kr
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Among the earliest volumes of this monograph series was a report by Lester Sontag and colleagues, of the esteemed Fels Institute, on the heart rate of the human fetus as an expression of the developing nervous system. Here, some 75 years later, we commemorate this work and provide historical and contemporary context on knowledge regarding fetal development, as well as results from our own research. These are based on synchronized monitoring of maternal and fetal parameters assessed between 24 and 36 weeks gestation on 740 maternal-fetal pairs compiled from eight separate longitudinal studies, which commenced in the early 1990s. Data include maternal heart rate, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and electrodermal activity and fetal heart rate, motor activity, and their integration. Hierarchical linear modeling of developmental trajectories reveals that the fetus develops in predictable ways consistent with advancing parasympathetic regulation. Findings also include: within-fetus stability (i.e., preservation of rank ordering over time) for heart rate, motor, and coupling measures; a transitional period of decelerating development near 30 weeks gestation; sex differences in fetal heart rate measures but not in most fetal motor activity measures; modest correspondence in fetal neurodevelopment among siblings as compared to unrelated fetuses; and deviations from normative fetal development in fetuses affected by intrauterine growth restriction and other conditions. Maternal parameters also change during this period of gestation and there is evidence that fetal sex and individual variation in fetal neurobehavior infl uence maternal physiological processes and the local intrauterine context. Results are discussed within the framework of neuromaturation, the emergence of individual differences, and the bidirectional nature of the maternal-fetal relationship. We pose a number of open questions for future research. Although the human fetus remains just out of reach, new technologies portend an era of accelerated discovery of the earliest period of development.
416 kr
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Cortisol, a hormone associated with the stress response, affects adult performance on learning and memory tasks, yet whether cortisol helps or hinders performance depends on the direction of cortisol change during the task, the amount of change, and the type of task. Past studies of infants are few and confl icting regarding whether an increasing or decreasing cortisol reactivity pattern facilitates cognitive performance. Similarly, few studies have assessed whether an association exists between maternal sensitivity and learning in infancy. The present study assessed relations between maternal sensitivity, infants’ cortisol response to maternal separation and a novel cognitive task, and cognitive performance at 3, 6, 8, 10, and 12 months. At each phase, infants completed different cognitive tasks, maternal and infant cortisol was measured before and after the task, and motherinfant behavior was assessed to determine maternal sensitivity. When performance on the tasks varied with cortisol response or maternal sensitivity, better performance was associated with a decreasing pattern of cortisol response (lower cortisol after the task than before) and higher levels of maternal sensitivity. Relations between cortisol response and infant cognitive performance were not, however, mediated by maternal sensitivity. Longitudinal analyses revealed no intra-individual stability in infants’ cortisol response patterns over the fi rst year; however, at the group level, the decreasing cortisol response pattern became more prevalent across this age range, especially in girls. Additionally, beginning at 6 months, maternal sensitivity was stable across phases. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the development of regulation abilities during infancy.
428 kr
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How do girls and boys in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) in the majority world vary with respect to central indicators of child growth and mortality, parental caregiving, discipline and violence, and child labor? How do key indicators of national gender equity and economic development relate to gender similarities and differences in each of these substantive areas of child development? This monograph of the SRCD is concerned with central topics of child gender, gendered parenting, gendered environments, and gendered behaviors and socializing practices in the underresearched and underserved world of LMIC. To examine protective and risk factors related to child gender in LMIC around the world, we used data from more than 2 million individuals in 400,000 families in 41 LMIC collected in the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, a household survey that includes nationally representative samples of participating countries. In the fi rst chapter of this monograph, we describe the conceptual "gender similarities" and "bioecological" frameworks that helped guide the monograph. In the second chapter, we detail the general methodology adhered to in the substantive chapters. Then, in topical chapters, we describe the situations of girls and boys with successive foci on child growth and mortality, parental caregiving, family discipline and violence, and child labor. We conclude with a general discussion of fi ndings from the substantive chapters in the context of gender and bioecological theories.Across 41 LMIC and four substantive areas of child development, few major gender differences emerged. Our data support a gender similarities view and suggest that general emphases on early child gender differences may be overstated at least for the developing world of LMIC.
Quality Thresholds, Features, and Dosage in Early Care and Education
Secondary Data Analyses of Child Outcomes
Häftad, Engelska, 2016
428 kr
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The questions of whether preschool children benefi t more strongly when early care and education (ECE) is at or above a threshold of quality, has specifi c quality features, and/or is of longer duration were examined in secondary data analyses of eight large ECE studies. These issues are pivotal in recent ECE policies designed to improve school readiness skills, especially for children from low-income families. Threshold analyses examined whether quality had stronger associations with gains in child outcomes in settings with high levels of quality than those with lower quality. Features analyses considered whether specific measures of instruction and of teacher-child interaction were more predictive of gains than global quality measures. Dosage analyses tested whether the amount of in ECE settings or in instruction in specific content areas predicted child outcomes. Threshold analyses provided some evidence for thresholds in measures of instructional quality in relation to reading and language skills in meta-analyses based on a prior-selected cut-points and, less clearly, in empirical methods designed to identify cut-points. Analyses examining quality features indicated stronger prediction of gains in child outcomes from interaction-specific and content-specific measures than from global measures. Propensity score analyses indicated that children had higher school readiness skills at the end of preschool and in kindergarten if they had two years of Head Start compared to one year. Finally, dosage analyses indicated that children showed larger gains in content areas when teachers spent more time providing instruction in those areas or when children had fewer absences. No evidence of quality by quantity interactions emerged. Implications of the thresholds findings for ECE policies such as Quality Rating and Improvement Systems are discussed. The dosage findings support the growing trend toward more than one year of access to publicly funded preschool programs for low-income children as well as increased focus on the content of ECE activities and instruction to enhance language, literacy, and math skills.
Working Memory Capacity in Context
Modeling Dynamic Processes of Behavior, Memory, and Development
Häftad, Engelska, 2016
402 kr
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Higher cognitive functions are reliably predicted by working memory measures from two domains: children's performance on complex span tasks, and infants' looking behavior. Despite the similar predictive power across these research areas, theories of working memory development have not connected these different task types and developmental periods. The current project works to bridge this gap with a processoriented theory, focusing on two tasks assessing visual working memory capacity in infants (the change-preference task) versus children and adults (the change detection task). Previous results seem inconsistent, with capacity estimates increasing from one to four items during infancy, but only two to three items during early childhood. A probable source of this discrepancy is the different task structures used with each age group, but prior theories were not suffi ciently specific to relate performance across tasks. The current theory focuses on cognitive dynamics, that is, the formation, maintenance, and use of memory representations within task contexts over development. This theory was formalized in a computational model to generate three predictions: 1) increasing capacity estimates in the change-preference task beyond infancy; 2) higher capacity estimates in change-preference versus change detection when tested within individuals; and 3) correlated performance across tasks because both rely on the same underlying memory system. Lastly, model simulations tested a fourth prediction: development across tasks could be explained through increasing real-time stability, realized computationally as strengthening connectivity. Results confi rmed these predictions, supporting the cognitive dynamics account of performance and development changes in real-time stability.
416 kr
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Executive control (EC) is a central construct in developmental science, although measurement limitations have hindered understanding of its nature and development in young children, relation to social risk, and prediction of important outcomes. Disentangling EC from the foundational cognitive abilities it regulates and that are inherently required for successful executive task completion (e.g., language, visual/spatial perception, and motor abilities) is particularly challenging at preschool age, when these foundational abilities are still developing and consequently differ substantially among children. A novel latent bifactor modeling approach delineated respective EC and foundational cognitive abilities components that undergird executive task performance in a socio demographically stratifi ed sample of 388 preschoolers in a longitudinal, cohort-sequential study. The bifactor model revealed a developmental shift, where both EC and foundational cognitive abilities contributed uniquely to executive task performance at ages 4.5 and 5.25 years, but were not separable at ages 3 and 3.75. Contrary to the view that EC is vulnerable to socio-familial risk, the contributions of household financial and learning resources to executive task performance were not specific to EC but were via their relation to foundational cognitive abilities. EC, though, showed a unique, discriminant relation with hyperactive symptoms late in the preschool period, whereas foundational cognitive abilities did not predict specifi c dimensions of dysregulated behavior. These findings form the basis for a new, integrated approach to the measurement and conceptualization of EC, which includes dual consideration of the contributions of EC and foundational cognitive abilities to executive task performance, particularly in the developmental context of preschool.
454 kr
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This monograph is an edited collection of chapters within the domain of developmental methodology that collectively share the following goals. First, this monograph provides updated and comprehensive, yet also accessible and brief, summaries of our current understanding of key methodologies used in developmental science. Second, this monograph describes how our current understanding can be further leveraged to advance understanding of human development. Third, this monograph identifies shortcomings in our understanding of developmental methodology in order to provide a roadmap for future methodological advances. Fourth, this monograph aims to organize developmental methodology as a subdiscipline within developmental science. The chapters of this monograph were selected to identify major themes of developmental methodology, broadly defined to encompass issues of design, analysis, and research progression. Besides covering a wide range of topics, chapters were selected that (a) represent active areas of research or debate, (b) are important in advancing the quality of developmental science, and (c) seem likely to remain active and important areas of developmental methodology in the foreseeable future. Early chapters focus on design issues, including the merits of different sampling strategies and the use of large-scale data sets in developmental science. In the middle chapters, attention shifts to issues in longitudinal design and analysis. These chapters include an overview of longitudinal analyses in developmental science, considerations in measurement within longitudinal studies, and person-specific longitudinal approaches. Later chapters consider broader issues of replication and research accumulation, as well as the history and future of developmental methodology.
Developmental Trajectories of Children's Adjustment across the Transition to Siblinghood
Pre-Birth and Sibling Outcomes at Year One
Häftad, Engelska, 2017
454 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
The birth of an infant sibling is a common occurrence in the lives of many toddler and preschool children. The current study examined individual differences in trajectories of young children's behavioral and emotional adjustment after the birth of a sibling. Growth mixture modeling (GMM) was conducted with a sample of 241 families expecting their second child using a longitudinal research design across the first year after the sibling's birth (prenatal, 1, 4, 8, and 12 months) on seven syndrome scales of the Child Behavior Checklist. Multiple classes describing different trajectory patterns of adjustment and adaptation emerged. There was no evidence of a persistent maladaptive response indicating children undergo a developmental crisis after the birth of a sibling. Most children were low on all problem behaviors examined and showed little change, although some children did experience more pronounced changes in the borderline or clinical range. There was an Adjustment and Adaptation Response for aggressive behavior, indicating that some young children react to stressful life events but adapt quickly. Data mining procedures uncovered various child, parent, and family variables that discriminated different trajectory classes. Children's temperament, coparenting, parental self-effi cacy, and parent—child attachment relationships were prominent in predicting children's adjustment after the birth of an infant sibling. When trajectory classes were used to predict sibling relationship quality at 12 months, children high on aggression, attention problems, and emotional reactivity engaged in more conflict and less positive involvement with the infant sibling at the end of the first year.
Vocabulary of 2-Year-Olds Learning English and an Additional Language: Norms and Effects of Linguistic Distance
Häftad, Engelska, 2018
454 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
The majority of the world’s children grow up learning two or more languages. The study of early bilingualism is central to current psycholinguistics, offering insights into issues such as transfer and interference in development. From an applied perspective, it poses a universal challenge to language assessment practices throughout childhood, as typically developing bilingual children usually underperform relative to monolingual norms when assessed in one language only. We measured vocabulary with Communicative Development Inventories for 372 24-month-old toddlers learning British English and one Additional Language out of a diverse set of 13 (Bengali, Cantonese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hindi-Urdu, Italian, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Welsh). We furthered theoretical understanding of bilingual development by showing, for the first time, that linguistic distance between the child’s two languages predicts vocabulary outcome, with phonological overlap related to expressive vocabulary, and word order typology and morphological complexity related to receptive vocabulary, in the Additional Language. Our study also has crucial clinical implications: we have developed the first bilingual norms for expressive and receptive vocabulary for 24-month-olds learning British English and an Additional Language. These norms were derived from factors identified as uniquely predicting CDI vocabulary measures: the relative amount of English versus the Additional Language in child-directed input and parental overheard speech, and infant gender. The resulting UKBTAT tool was able to accurately predict the English vocabulary of an additional group of 58 bilinguals learning an Additional Language outside our target range. This offers a pragmatic method for the assessment of children in the majority language when no tool exists in the Additional Language. Our findings also suggest that the effect of linguistic distance might extend beyond bilinguals’ acquisition of early vocabulary to encompass broader cognitive processes, and could constitute a key factor in the study of the debated bilingual advantage.
454 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
We live in an increasingly pharmacological and medical world, in which children and adults frequently encounter alleged treatments for an enormous range of illnesses. How do we come to understand what heals and why? Here, 15 studies explore how 1,414 children (ages 5–11) and 882 adults construe the efficacies of different kinds of cures. Developmental patterns in folk physics, folk psychology, and folk biology lead to predictions about which expectations about illnesses and cures will remain relatively constant across development and which expectations will undergo change. With respect to a constant framework, we find that even young school children distinguish between physical and psychological disorders and the treatments that would be most effective for those disorders. In contrast, younger children reason differently about temporal properties associated with cures. They often judge that dramatic departures from prescribed schedules will continue to be effective. They are also less likely than older ages to differentiate between the treatment needs of acute versus chronic disorders, which in turn reflect different intuitions about how medicines work. Younger children see medicines as agent-like entities that migrate only to afflicted regions while having "cure-all" properties, views that help explain their difficulties grasping side effects. They also differ from older children and adults by judging pain and effort as reducing, instead of enhancing, a treatment's power. Finally, across all studies, optimism about treatment efficacy declines with age. Taken together, these studies show major developmental changes in how children envision the ways medicines and other cures work in the body. These findings reveal new dimensions of folk biology and its links to broader patterns in cognitive development. They also carry strong implications for how medicines should be provided and explained to children, as well as for what kinds of medication myths might persevere even in adults.
Del 3 - Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development (MONO)
Moral Reasoning About Human Welfare in Adolescents and Adults
Judging Conflicts Involving Sacrificing and Saving Lives
Häftad, Engelska, 2018
454 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
The value of human life is a significant moral value for most people. Yet, past research has devoted little attention to the development of moral reasoning about the value of life. The present studies investigated how adolescents and adults reason about the value of life in the context of so-called trolley car situations. These situations, adopted from philosophy, involve the option of sacrificing the life of one person to save five others. Based on past developmental research, we expected that individuals would reason about distinct and sometimes conflicting considerations regarding the value of life. This approach contrasted with past research on adults' responses to trolley car situations, which has been taken to show that most moral evaluations are based not on reasoning but on affective, automatic reactions. In Study 1, 288 adolescents and adults were interviewed about trolley car situations designed to examine considerations like the value of human life and the relationship of those at risk with the actors. In Study 2, 144 college studens were interviewed to further examine the roles of those involved. Participants' justifications referred not only to the number of lives saved, but also to other considerations, such as intrinsic rights and personal responsibility for events. Moreover, responses indicated frequent conflicts about standard trolley car situations, counter to the argument that people's evaluations are automatic based soley on a counting of lives saved. The present findings indicated that adolescents and adults reason about, seek to coordinate, distinct moral considerations regarding the value of life.