Child development最新文献

A focus on positive child development among Indigenous children has largely been absent from developmental science. In this special section of Child Development, we sought to address continuing inequity in representation and valuing Indigenous knowledge and voices by soliciting articles that identified cultural and strengths-based factors Indigenous children, youth, and families cultivate and leverage to promote positive development. In this introduction to the special section, we provide an overview of the four empirical articles included, with attention to the ways these articles advance Indigenous paradigms and methodologies by focusing on the unique histories and strengths of four distinct Indigenous communities. We end with a discussion of how to promote continued growth and inclusiveness in developmental science with Indigenous communities.

The ability to compare plays a key role in how humans learn, but words that describe relations between objects, like comparisons, are difficult to learn. We examined how children learn size comparison words, and how their interpretations of these change across development. One-hundred-and-forty children in England (36-107 months; 68 girls; majority White) were asked to build block structures that were bigger, longer, smaller, shorter, or taller than an experimenter's. Children were most successful with words that refer to size increases. Younger children were less accurate with smaller and shorter, often building bigger structures. The dimensional aspect of taller emerged gradually. These findings suggest that children's interpretation of the meaning of size comparison words changes and becomes more precise across development.

Little is known about how discrimination contributes to health behaviors in childhood. We examined the association between children's exposure to discrimination and their snacking behavior in a sample of youth of color (N = 164, M_age = 11.5 years, 49% female, 60% Black, 40% Hispanic/Latinx). We also explored whether children's body mass index (BMI) or sleepiness moderated the association between discrimination and calorie consumption. The significant link between discrimination and calorie consumption was moderated by children's BMI, such that discrimination was associated with calorie consumption for children with BMI percentiles above 79%. Children's sleepiness did not serve as an additional moderator. Efforts to promote health should consider children's broader socio-contextual experiences, including discrimination, as factors that may shape eating patterns.

This study investigated 3- to 5-year-olds' (N = 64, 37 girls, 62.5% White, data collected between 2021-2022) ability to use probabilistic information gleaned through active search to appropriately change or maintain expectations. In an online fishing game, children first learned that one of two ponds was good for catching fish. During a subsequent testing phase, children searched the ponds for fish. Half saw outcomes that were probabilistically consistent with training, and the other half saw outcomes that were probabilistically inconsistent. Children in the Inconsistent condition adapted their search strategies, showing evidence of changing their expectations. Those in the Consistent condition maintained their initial search strategy. Trial-by-trial analyses suggested that children used a combination of heuristic and information integration strategies to guide their search behavior.

Extensive evidence documents negative consequences of adversity for children's development. Here, we extend such work by looking beyond average effects to consider variation in susceptibility to both threat and deprivation in terms of cognitive and social-emotional development, using an influence-statistic methodology. Data come from the ongoing Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (N = 14,541, 49.1% female, age range: 6 month to 12 year, race and ethnicity: 97.8% white, 0.4% black, and 0.6% other). With respect to anticipated associations of threat with problem behavior and of deprivation with cognition, results of this pre-registered research revealed that a roughly equal proportion of children proved to be susceptible in a domain-general manner (similarly influenced) and a domain-specific one (dissimilarly influenced). Implications for intervention are considered.