Child Development Perspectives最新文献

Recent empirical investigations have concentrated primarily on studying imitation as a social tool that satisfies social motivations, while other potential reasons for and forms of imitation have attracted less attention. These investigations have also focused on studying the role of pedagogy in imitative learning and set up most experiments in a pedagogical framework. In this article, we present two gaps in studying high-fidelity imitation. First, social motivation may not be the only motivation, especially in less socially stratified communities. Second, imitative learning in observational contexts is understudied. We discuss these gaps by providing examples of alternative imitative learning scenarios and aspects that may have been overlooked and thus underexplored. Moving forward, cross-cultural investigations targeting other aspects and forms of imitative learning can provide insights into how observational and pedagogical learning together foster effective learning across diverse childhood ecologies.

Ageism against older adults has been well studied, yet adolescents also experience ageism in pervasive and harmful ways. In this article, we describe anti-youth ageism as a system of oppression that encompasses negative stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination against adolescents that uphold power hierarchies and marginalize young people based on their age. Drawing from interdisciplinary theory and research, we examine adolescents' experiences of anti-youth ageism at interpersonal, cultural, and institutional levels, and consider the ways anti-youth ageism is internalized. Across many levels, anti-youth ageism is understood in concert with other systems of oppression such as racism and cis-heterosexism. The field needs a new wave of anti-oppressive developmental science to understand the multilayered, intersectional manifestations of anti-youth ageism and the impacts of anti-youth ageism on various domains of development. Research can help foster the creation of intervention strategies to reduce harm to adolescents and their development.

Comorbidity, the simultaneous or successive co-occurrence of two or more disorders in one individual, is common among individuals with learning disabilities (LDs). The topic has garnered much attention in the field of LD, with advances over the past three decades in describing, predicting, and explaining comorbid LDs. However, efforts to design, evaluate, and implement interventions for individuals with comorbid LDs have received far less attention. In this article, we focus on these critical matters. After discussing how comorbidity and LDs have been conceptualized, defined, and explained, we consider what the field has learned about how individuals with comorbid LDs respond to academic interventions and what approaches may be effective for supporting their educational development.

Given the relevance of caregivers' perceptions, cognitions, and emotions about their child's mental states for caregiving behavior and children's development, researchers from multiple theoretical perspectives have developed constructs to assess caregivers' cognitions, resulting in a large but scattered body of literature. In this article, we highlight the conceptual overlap among and uniqueness of six constructs assessing caregivers' cognitions about their child at 36 months and younger: infant intentionality, mental representations, mind-mindedness, parental embodied mentalizing, parental empathy, and parental reflective functioning. We define constructs, present approaches to measurement, and propose elements of importance that fall under the umbrella of caregivers' cognitions and that may be associated differentially with children's early cognitive and social–emotional development. We conclude with recommendations for researchers aiming to capture caregivers' cognitions about their child's mental states, whether focusing on one of the six reviewed constructs or on specific elements (e.g., awareness of the child's mind or accuracy of caregivers' perceptions of their child) under the umbrella of caregivers' cognitions.

From the earliest moments in their lives, infants begin to build memories about their past and accumulate knowledge about the world. In this article, we focus on the distinction between memory for specific events and memory for general information, and the ongoing debate about which type of memory provides the foundation for the development of the other. Some researchers argue that specific memory developmentally precedes general memory, whereas others support the opposite position. Our literature review suggests that the latter position is inconsistent with many empirical findings and theoretical principles of memory captured by computational models capable of accounting for these findings. We propose that just good enough mnemonic acuity could be a starting point for memory development, and that it can support both specific and generalized memories.

Chimpanzees and other great apes seem to be much less cooperative than humans overall, yet they nevertheless reliably help others in many instrumental circumstances. Although in many contexts the helping behavior of chimpanzees is quite similar to that of human children, recent studies using both behavioral and psychophysiological paradigms have revealed important differences, specifically, in the underlying motivations for prosocial behavior. Here, we provide both a synthesis of recent empirical work and an evolutionary hypothesis that can account for the differences in chimpanzee and human helping motivations.