Child Development Perspectives最新文献

Code-switching is a common and natural aspect of many bilingual individuals' everyday language use. For many infants growing up in bilingual environments, such language mixing forms may be a regular part of their daily input. However, the frequency and type of code-switching can vary widely by caregivers' language proficiency, context, and social norms. As early as infancy, increased exposure to code-switches in bilingual environments promotes differences in attention at the behavioral, physiological, and neural levels. In this article, we propose that exposure to code-switching may act as a mechanism driving cognitive adaptations in bilingual children's attention, but more evidence is needed on children's exposure to code-switching. Robust measures of bilingual experiences focusing on qualitative and quantitative aspects of code-switching are necessary to deepen our understanding of the variations in bilingual cognitive development.

Children's language development is tied to their linguistic input. While most of this research has focused on adult speech, around the world, children regularly engage with other children, in the home or in early childhood education settings. Here, I contextualize the frequency of interactions with other children. I then highlight properties of speech from children, such as acoustic signature and content, which might make other children's speech particularly relevant for language learning. Finally, I discuss how considering speech from children allows scholars to create theories that include societies around the world, where caretaking often involves more children and higher birthrates are common. I conclude that theories of language development should consider speech from other children as an important component.

AI companions (AI-Cs)-rapidly emerging conversational agents built on large language models that can provide personalized humanlike companionship-create unprecedented opportunities for adolescents to form emotional bonds with nonhuman entities during a critical period for social development. In this article, we discuss the interplay between adolescents' use of AI-Cs and their social relationships based on theoretical hypotheses driving research on digital communication and adolescent well-being. We explore the benefits and risks of AI-Cs to social development based on the stimulation hypothesis and the displacement hypothesis: AI-Cs can provide safe spaces for identity exploration and emotional expression, potentially building skills that transfer to human relationships; however, concerns about AI-Cs include time displacement, psychological dependence, and unrealistic relationship expectations. We also address how adolescents' social relationships may drive their AI-C use, based on the social enhancement hypothesis and the social compensation hypothesis. Our discussion draws on studies of adolescents and adults in the United States and in other countries. We offer recommendations for research in this area, which deserves urgent investigation as these technologies advance rapidly.

The broaden-and-build theory is a prominent framework in positive psychology that considers positive emotions as essential for people to flourish. The theory does not specify the origins of positive emotions during development, although experiences in the first years of life are considered influential for long-term adjustment and well-being. In this article, we propose a developmental extension of the broaden-and-build theory. This extension identifies belonging as a potential third function of positive emotions in addition to broadening and building. We suggest that positive emotions, inextricably linked to social interactions, play a crucial role in satisfying infants' and young children's fundamental need to belong. The belonging function of positive emotions might pave the way for broaden-and-build processes. Our proposed extended framework provides an opportunity to consider the origins and functions of early positive emotions in the context of social interactions.

Counterfactual reasoning is the ability to reason about how the world might have been if past events or states had been different. It is helpful for making sense of past experiences to create future blueprints. Languages like English apply subjunctive forms to directly mark counterfactual premises. In contrast, Chinese does not apply subjunctive forms and conveys counterfactuality by contextual and semantic cues. These differences in expressing counterfactual premises may influence how children interpret and reason from counterfactual premises, affecting their performance on counterfactual reasoning tasks. In this article, I review both studies of children speaking Chinese, which does not apply subjunctive forms, and studies of children speaking languages that do apply subjunctive forms (e.g., English). In doing so, I suggest how and why the development of counterfactual reasoning may differ across languages. I also make suggestions for studying cross-linguistic variations.