Child Development Perspectives最新文献

Civic science (CS) is an approach to science learning and action in which youth determine issues of concern in their communities and use science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) knowledge and methods to address them. In this article, we focus on CS as it is applied to environmental concerns and enacted by children and youth in urban communities. Core CS practices include relevance of local place and culturally responsive principles for youth's learning and community contributions, egalitarian intergenerational partnerships with adults from community-based organizations, teamwork and collective action, and public regard for youth's community environmental contributions. We discuss CS's potential to address the marginalization of youth from minoritized backgrounds in traditional STEM and environmental education. We also argue that the way CS frames science for the public good will prepare younger generations to meet 21st-century environmental challenges.

Over the past 50 years, scientists have made amazing discoveries about the origins of human language acquisition. Central to this field of study is the process by which infants' perceptual sensitivities gradually align with native language structure, known as perceptual narrowing. Perceptual narrowing offers a theoretical account of how infants draw on environmental experience to induce underlying linguistic structure, providing an important pathway to word learning. Researchers have advanced perceptual narrowing theory as a universal developmental theory that applies broadly across language learners. In this article, we examine diversity and representation of empirical evidence for perceptual narrowing of speech in infancy. As demonstrated, cumulative evidence draws from limited types of learners, languages, and locations, so current accounts of perceptual narrowing must be viewed in terms of sampling patterns. We suggest actions to diversify and broaden empirical investigations of perceptual narrowing to address core issues of validity, replicability, and generalizability.

Autistic children tend to show divergent social information processing, and controversies exist regarding the mechanisms underlying this processing. In this article, we summarize and categorize the current theories and evidence related to hypo- and hyperarousal accounts of social information processing in autism. The hypo-arousal account proposes reduced motivation or sensitivity to process social information and is supported by behavioral, eye-tracking, and neuroimaging studies. Recent evidence has challenged this account, highlighting the role of eye gaze in interpreting the hypo-brain activation. The hyperarousal account posits that social context could evoke anxiety and discomfort in autistic children, which could interfere with their social information processing and result in social avoidance. Most research in this field has studied children and adolescents, but some studies have included adults since autism is a lifelong condition. Here, we highlight the importance of considering the heterogeneity of arousal patterns in autistic children when developing individualized supporting protocols.

Sleep is a robust predictor of child and adolescent development. Race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), and related experiences (e.g., discrimination) are associated with sleep, but researchers have just begun to understand the role of sleep in the development of racial/ethnic and SES disparities in broader psychosocial adjustment and cognitive functioning during childhood and adolescence. In this article, we discuss poor sleep as a potential mechanism contributing to the development of such disparities, and better sleep as a potential protective factor that diminishes such disparities. We conclude by offering recommendations for research to advance understanding of sleep as a key bioregulatory system that may underlie or protect against detrimental developmental outcomes related to socioeconomic adversity and belonging to a historically minoritized group.

Parents' executive functions (EFs), or cognitive skills facilitating thought and behavior management, are meaningful correlates of parenting behavior. EFs are theorized to support parents in inhibiting reactive responses, managing information during parent–child interactions, and adapting to novel developmental demands. Less effective EFs associate with risk for harsh parenting and physical abuse, underscoring the importance of research on parental EFs in promoting healthy child development. Yet, despite the strong theory, findings are mixed and reveal only modest effect sizes in relations between EFs and parenting. One explanation may be a lack of ecological validity in measuring parental EFs. Traditional measures of adult EFs have been used, but these are decontextualized and do not reflect the cognitively and emotionally demanding nature of parenting. In this article, we argue that new and adapted measures are needed. We discuss the role of EFs in parenting, review measurement, and offer suggestions for improvements in ecological validity.

Over the last 20 years, we have learned much about the extent to which early-life deprivation affects the mental health of children and adolescents. This body of evidence comes predominantly from studies of children raised in institutional care. The Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) is the only randomized controlled trial designed to evaluate whether the transition to family-based foster care early in development can ameliorate the long-term impact of institutional deprivation on psychopathology during vulnerable developmental windows such as adolescence. In this review, we detail the extent to which early deprivation affects mental health during this period, the capacity of family-based care to facilitate recovery from early deprivation, and the mechanisms underpinning these effects spanning social–emotional, cognitive, stress, and neurobiological domains. We end by discussing the implications and directions for the BEIP and other studies of youth raised in institutions.

Early care and education (ECE) evolved around two goals: allowing parents of young children to work (the purpose) and promoting early childhood development (the promise). An extensive body of research has examined how ECE promotes child development. A much sparser body of research has studied how ECE access affects families' economic and psychological well-being, particularly from a developmental perspective. These imbalanced literatures have created an incomplete picture of the role of ECE in developmental science, and this gap in knowledge limits the extent to which both the purpose and the promise of ECE can be fulfilled. In this article, we argue that developmental researchers should pay more attention to the parent and family outcomes, processes, and mechanisms that depend on stable, high-quality care (the purpose), and how these downstream cascades influence child development in the short and long term (the promise). While these issues are international, in this article, we focus on the development of and research on ECE in the United States to illustrate how the focus on both the purpose and promise of ECE could expand policies and research in the area.

Adolescents are developmentally distinct from adults in ways that merit a tailored response to juvenile crime. Normative adolescent brain development is associated with increases in risk taking, which may include criminal behavior. Juvenile delinquency peaks during the adolescent years and declines in concert with psychosocial maturation. However, current U.S. approaches to juvenile justice are misaligned with youth's developmental needs and may undermine the very psychosocial development necessary for youth to transition out of crime and lead healthy adult lives. In this article, I discuss empirically supported and efficacious responses to juvenile crime in the United States, as well as opportunities for further developmental reform of the juvenile justice system. Developmentally appropriate responses to juvenile crime prioritize community-based corrections and engage youth's social context in the rehabilitative process. The juvenile justice system shares the responsibility to prepare youth to live fulfilling, productive adult lives; that responsibility can be achieved by partnering with developmental scientists to inform juvenile justice practice and policy.

In this article, we aim to chart a path for a new generation of early care and education (ECE) quality assessments that accurately and equitably capture key inputs to the social–emotional well-being of the diverse population of young children in ECE classrooms in the United States. We zero in on four promising, socially supportive features of center-based ECE settings that are actionable for research, policy, and practice: teachers' classroom behavior-management strategies, their scaffolding of peer interactions, aspects of their own well-being that shape their capacities to support children's social–emotional development, and indicators of bias-free and culturally responsive ECE environments.