Advances in Child Development and Behavior最新文献

Decades of human and animal research demonstrates that stress responsive neuroendocrine systems calibrate to the harshness of environmental conditions during fetal and early postnatal life. Emerging evidence indicates that if conditions change markedly over childhood, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis may recalibrate during puberty, another period that involves heightened neural plasticity and rapid maturation of neurobehavioral systems. These recent findings have prompted increased interest in the potential for stress system calibration/recalibration over development. To direct research in this area, this chapter integrates and discusses theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence pertaining to calibration and recalibration of the stress response. We describe how these concepts relate to other constructs, including sensitive periods, plasticity, and programming. We then consider four potential periods of calibration/recalibration: fetal, infancy, puberty, and pregnancy/lactation. In each section, we discuss evidence that the HPA and/or sympathetic medullary adrenal (SAM) system undergoes developmental change, rendering it more plastic and amenable to shift its activity in response to environmental conditions. We also review findings that the impacts of environmental harshness on stress responding persist beyond these periods. We then articulate that marked change in the quality of the environment (from harsh to benign or vice versa) is required in order for recalibration to occur, and that recalibration would result in shifts in stress responding to more closely align with the profiles of individuals who have experienced these conditions throughout life. Finally, we reflect on whether recalibration of the HPA and SAM system may extend to the other stress-responsive neurobehavioral systems.

In recent years, many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) adults have become parents. LGBTQ+ parenthood does, however, remain a controversial topic across the United States and around the world. Several questions have been raised. For instance, to what extent do LGBTQ+ adults make capable parents? Do children who have LGBTQ+ parents grow up in healthy ways? What factors contribute to positive family functioning in families with LGBTQ+ parents? A growing body of social science research has addressed these questions, and the findings suggest both that LGBTQ+ adults are successful in their roles as parents and that their children develop in positive ways. Overall, the findings to date suggest that parental sexual orientation and gender identity do not in themselves determine success in parenting or child development; indeed, sexual and gender minority parents and their children have shown remarkable resilience, even in the face of many challenges. Contextual issues, as well as implications of research findings for law and policy around the world are discussed.

The integrated theory of numerical development provides a unified approach to understanding numerical development, including acquisition of knowledge about whole numbers, fractions, decimals, percentages, negatives, and relations among all of these types of numbers (Siegler, Thompson, & Schneider, 2011). Although, considerable progress has been made toward many aspects of this integration (Siegler, Im, Schiller, Tian, & Braithwaite, 2020), the role of percentages has received much less attention than that of the other types of numbers. This chapter is an effort to redress this imbalance by reporting data on understanding of percentages and their relations to other types of numbers. We first describe the integrated theory; then summarize what is known about development of understanding of whole numbers, fractions, and decimals; then describe recent progress in understanding the role of percentages; and finally consider instructional implications of the theory and research.

Averages dominate developmental science: There are representative groups, mean trajectories, and generalizations to typical children. Nearly all parents and teachers, however, eagerly proclaim that few youth are average; each child, adolescent, and young adult is unique. Indeed, individual youth are the focus of many eminent developmental theories, yet there is a shocking paucity of developmental methods-including study designs and analysis techniques-that truly afford individual-level inferences. Thus, the goal of this chapter is to explicate the advantages of an idiographic approach to developmental science, that is, an approach that provides insight into individual youth, often by studying within-person variation in intensive longitudinal data, such as densely coded observations, repeated daily or momentary assessments, and functional neuroimages. In three domains across development, the chapter illustrates the benefits of an idiographic approach by comparing empirical conclusions offered by traditional mean-based analysis techniques versus techniques that leverage the temporal and individualized nature of intensive longitudinal data. The chapter then concentrates on group iterative multiple model estimation (GIMME), which is an analysis technique that uses intensive longitudinal data to create youth-specific temporal networks, detailing how brain regions or behaviors are directionally related across time. The promise of GIMME is exemplified by applications to three different domains across development. The chapter closes by encouraging future idiographic developmental science to consider how research questions, study designs, and data analyses can be formed, implemented, and conducted in ways that optimize inferences about individual-not average-youth.

Early forms of cooperation and conflict feature regularly in young children's interactions with other people. However, these two types of social interaction are only rarely studied together in the same sample. In this chapter we review studies of cooperation and conflict in children under 3 years of age, with a particular focus on peer interaction. Only a few studies examined cooperation and conflict in parallel. To illustrate how conflict and cooperation can be studied simultaneously, we present findings from a longitudinal study of social development, in which previously unacquainted toddlers were observed during laboratory birthday parties. These analyses revealed that the two types of interaction are positively associated and provide opportunities for young children to refine their social skills.

The aim of this chapter is to examine the role of sleep and cognition in the context of the cumulative risk model examining samples of at-risk infants and maternal-infant dyads. The cumulative risk model posits that non-optimal developmental outcomes are the result of multiple factors in a child's life including, but not limited to, prenatal teratogenic exposures, premature birth, family socioeconomic status, parenting style and cognitions as well as the focus of this volume, sleep. We highlight poor neonatal sleep as both an outcome of perinatal risk as well as a risk factor to developing attentional and cognitive capabilities during early childhood. Outcomes associated with and contributing to poor sleep and cognition during infancy are examined in relation to other known risks in our clinical population. Implications of this research and recommendations for interventions for this population are provided.