Child Development Perspectives最新文献

Today's youth are growing up in a world threatened by climate change. Facing an uncertain future, young people—and especially adolescents—tend to be concerned about climate change, even more so than other age groups. How can socializing agents (e.g., educators, policymakers, clinicians) support and engage adolescents as they come of age in a warming world? In this article, we review studies on climate change and youth development from the perspective of self-determination theory (SDT). SDT provides a framework for understanding a nascent body of literature on adolescents' responses to climate change. In particular, SDT offers insights into the factors that can facilitate or undermine adolescents' internalization of climate science, engagement in pro-environmental behavior, and capacity for resilience and well-being. We discuss SDT's potential to inform efforts to encourage positive youth development amid climate change, and we identify priorities for investigation.

The development of executive function (EF) has been linked to various life outcomes, motivating intense research on the topic. While much of this research has focused on more thoroughly understanding age-related changes of the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms involved, recent theoretical and empirical works have stressed how the immediate physical and social context plays an important role in how children engage in control. Recent studies have shown that the experimenter is an important variable modulating how children engage EF. In this article, I argue that this social presence should be examined more thoroughly to understand the influence of the research context on assessing EF in children. However, this examination should not neglect the fact that the presence of others and the interactions with them likely shape the development of EF in the long run, with important interindividual differences. Examining how others affect children's development of EF can have important implications, such as better reproducibility of studies' findings and theoretical conceptions.

In infancy, sensorimotor capacities directly affect learning. Although developmental scientists have studied the link between sensorimotor capacities and learning, their work has focused primarily on a narrow window of time connecting just two domains. In this article, we propose that considering concurrences across multiple time points and domains provides novel insights into how sensorimotor capacities systematically shape learning. First, we present a developmental map synthesizing changes across the vision, motor, and language domains in the first 18 months of life. Using the map as a guide, we review literature identifying how changes in one sensorimotor domain affect learning. We then highlight additional concurrences that have not been systematically explored and use the concrete example of learning word-object mappings to illustrate how the developmental map provides rich ground to raise new questions and revisit old ones. We end with a call to action to fill key gaps in the map by considering variations in other domains and cultures, as well as in atypical development.

Humans routinely use external thinking tools, like pencil and paper, maps, and calculators, to solve cognitive problems that would have once been solved internally. As many youth face unprecedented exposure to increasingly capable technological aids, there is a growing pressure to understand children's cognitive offloading capacities and propensities, and what they stand to gain or lose as frequent offloaders in the modern world. In this article, we review emerging research on the development of cognitive offloading. Children as young as 4 years can engage in effective offloading strategies that follow principles similar to those used by adults—for example, greater recruitment of external support when tasks are more difficult. However, young children's strategies also show evidence of bias (sometimes inadequate and sometimes excessive offloading), lack of selectivity, and lack of self-initiation. We also draw attention to important avenues for future research, working toward protecting and nurturing children's cognitive well-being in the digital age.

In this article, we adopt culturally relevant perspectives on developmental science that acknowledge and value the diversity of backgrounds and experiences of young children and their families to identify opportunities to advance the measurement of early childhood development. We focus on direct child assessments that can drive more equitable early learning experiences and outcomes by informing the work of educators and program- and system-level decision-makers. Specifically, we describe potential advancements in the content (what is measured), method (how assessments are conducted), and output (how data are presented) of early learning assessments. Throughout, we highlight opportunities to elevate the experiences of those who use assessment—children, families, educators, and administrators—to develop equity-centered, engaging assessments that provide comprehensive, fair, and useful insights.

Scholars acknowledge the significant role of puberty in the risks for adverse outcomes. However, we lack understanding of the relevant social and structural factors at play. Current theoretical approaches to research on puberty were posited based on the experiences of White, middle-class girls who developed early or late, disregarding the interplay among cultural, societal, and individual factors that shape perceptions of pubescent children and their experiences. The limited focus on timing effects has failed to generate comprehensive knowledge of broader pubertal experiences. In this article, we argue that intersectional understanding can overcome current deficiencies in research on puberty. We critique the predominant theoretical approaches in pubertal research, provide an overview of the intersectionality framework, and elucidate how intersectionality can be incorporated into puberty research. We conclude with recommendations for research. In so doing, we hope the intersectionality framework allows scholars of puberty to rethink how pubertal effects are examined.

Many young people are inclined toward risk taking and also toward helping other people. Prosocial risk taking is a term that can describe different ways that youth provide significant instrumental and emotional support to family members, friends, and strangers, even when it involves a personal risk. In this article, we review research about different types of prosocial risk taking and highlight examples, emphasizing a developmental perspective by examining change across childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. Research to date suggests that young people are more likely to engage in prosocial risk taking when they are more tolerant of uncertainty, have greater sensation-seeking, perspective-taking, and empathy, and when they are motivated by reputational concerns. Individual differences in prosocial risk-taking behavior depend on youth's access to opportunities to explore, practice, and experience positive social feedback. Providing opportunities for youth to direct their risk-taking tendencies toward prosocial outlets may help minimize risks to their psychosocial health and promote individual and community well-being.

Researchers agree that both domain-general skills and domain-specific skills contribute to mathematics knowledge, but questions arise as to which skills can and should be trained to improve children's learning outcomes. In this article, we synthesize research on training three domain-general constructs in early childhood (patterning skills, working memory, and spatial reasoning) and their causal links to mathematics knowledge. The results are clear: Practice with these domain-general tasks is unlikely to transfer to higher scores on measures of mathematics knowledge, especially for preschool-aged children. Based on this evidence, we argue against using isolated domain-general training to enhance math knowledge in early childhood. We offer recommendations for researchers and practitioners to optimize best practices in this area.

Children need to learn the demands of their native language in the early vocabulary development phase. In this dynamic process, parental multimodal input may shape neurodevelopmental trajectories while also being tailored by child-related factors. Moving beyond typically characterized group profiles, in this article, we synthesize growing evidence on the effects of parental multimodal input (amount, quality, or absence), domain-specific input (space and math), and language-specific input (causal verbs and sound symbols) on preterm, full-term, and deaf children's early vocabulary development, focusing primarily on research with children learning Turkish and Turkish Sign Language. We advocate for a theoretical perspective, integrating neonatal characteristics and parental input, and acknowledging the unique constraints of languages.