Child development最新文献

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are highly impactful stressors that increase individuals' risk for a plethora of negative developmental and health outcomes. Furthermore, minoritized groups and under-resourced individuals are at higher risk for ACEs, positioning these stressors as possible mechanisms driving health disparities. Given this fact, a strong methodological foundation is necessary to ensure maximal clinical value. As emphasized by Jensen et al. (https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14050), this foundation must begin with rigorous ACEs measurement—a goal that requires careful matching between ACEs measures and the scoring procedures used. To amplify their message while advocating for an alternative approach that may better reflect the conceptualization of ACEs, we write this commentary to highlight the merits of causal indicator models as a better match between theory and methodology.

A series of experiments conducted in Central Europe (Hungary, Austria) and East Asia (Japan) probed whether 5- to 10-year-old children (n = 436, 213 female) and adults (n = 71, 43 female; all data collected between July 2020 and May 2023) would infer traits and choose partners accordingly, in a novel touchscreen game. The participants observed third-party actions and interactions of animated agents whose behavior varied in prosociality and skill, and subsequently selected whom to play with in potentially cooperative endeavors. Overall, the results indicate (1) that trait inference may not naturally follow from action understanding but relies on learning and experimental task framing, and (2) that by 7 years of age, children begin to capitalize on such inferences in partner choice.

Do children and adults recognize the value of disagreement for learning? Across two preregistered studies (data collected 2023), 4- to 8-year-old children (N = 200, 101 females, mixed ethnicities) and adults (N = 200, 99 females, mixed ethnicities) were asked whether a protagonist would learn more by talking to someone who agrees or disagrees with them about different beliefs. Across studies, participants more often endorsed learning from someone who disagreed with the protagonist when no “correct” answer existed, that is, when beliefs concerned preferences or ambiguous situations, or when the protagonist did not hold the typically “correct” belief. Adults endorsed learning from disagreement and articulated why disagreement is helpful for learning more often than children.

This research with two studies examined whether young children's moral judgments of honesty and dishonesty predict their actual cheating behavior. Participants were 200 children aged 3–6 years (2021–2022. Study 1: N = 80, M_age = 4.96, 40 girls; Study 2: N = 120, M_age = 4.98, 60 girls; all middle-class Han Chinese). Children completed a temptation resistance paradigm assessing honest or cheating behaviors. They also made moral judgments about story characters who cheated or acted honestly on school tests. Results showed that the more negatively children judged cheating, the less likely they were to cheat. This finding indicates a knowledge–behavior link regarding cheating behavior. It underscores the importance of studying the connection between moral cognition and action in early childhood.

Children rely on their Approximate Number System to intuitively perceive number. Such adaptations often exhibit sensitivity to real-world statistics. This study investigates a potential manifestation of the ANS's sensitivity to real-world statistics: a negative power-law distribution of objects in natural scenes should be reflected in children's expectations about number, or in more Bayesian terms, a low number prior distribution. Five- to eight-year-old children (n = 80; 39 girls, 41 boys) and adults (n = 20) in 2022 completed a number discrimination task in which one side was corrupted by perceptual noise. Children and adults demonstrate a low number prior. No age-related differences were observed, suggesting that the prior is formed by age five and does not strengthen with age.

Children's evaluations of empathizers were examined using vignette-based tasks (N = 159 4- to 7-year-old U.S. children, 82 girls, 52% White) between March 2023 and March 2024. Children typically evaluated empathizers positively compared to less empathic others. They rated empathic responses as more appropriate, selected empathizers as nicer, and inferred more positive relationships between empathizers and the targets of empathy. However, when empathy was contrasted with helping behavior, or directed toward an immoral actor, evaluations of empathy were more negative. Older children weighed helping and empathy more equally and shifted their evaluations more when considering responses to immoral acts. These results show children use empathy in their social evaluations, and contextual influences on these evaluations strengthen with age.