New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development最新文献

Child environmental health (CEH) science has identified numerous effects of early life exposures to common, ubiquitous environmental toxicants. CEH scientists have documented the costs not only to individual children but also to population-level health effects of such exposures. Importantly, such risks are unequally distributed in the population, with historically marginalized communities and the children living in these communities receiving the most damaging exposures. Developmental science offers a lens and set of methodologies to identify nuanced biological and behavioral processes that drive child development across physical, cognitive, and socioemotional domains. Developmental scientists are also experts in considering the multiple, hierarchically-layered contexts that shape development alongside toxicant exposure. Such contexts and the individuals acting within them make up an overarching "child serving ecosystem" spanning systems and sectors that serve children directly and indirectly. Articulating how biobehavioral mechanisms and social-ecological contexts unfold from a developmental perspective are needed in order to inform CEH translation and intervention efforts across this child-serving ecosystem. Developmentalists can also benefit from integrating CEH science findings in their work by considering the role of the physical environment, and environmental toxicants specifically, on child health and development. Building on themes that were laid out by Trentacosta and Mulligan in 2020, this commentary presents recommendations for connecting developmental and CEH science and for translating such work so that it can be used to promote child development in an equitable manner across this child-serving ecosystem. These opportunities include (1) Using Developmentally-Informed Conceptual Models; (2) Applying Creative, Sophisticated, and Rigorous Methods; (3) Integrating Developmentally-Sensitive Intervention Considerations; and (4) Establishing Interdisciplinary Collaborations and Cross-Sector Partnerships.

Climate change-related disasters have drawn increased attention to the impact of air pollution on health. 122 children ages 9-11 years old, M(SD) = 9.91(.56), participated. Levels of particulate matter (PM2.5) near participants' homes were obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency. Cytokines were assayed from 100 child serum samples: IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, and TNFα. Autonomic physiology was indexed by pre-ejection period (PEP), respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), cardiac autonomic regulation (CAR), and cardiac autonomic balance (CAB). IL-6 was positively related to daily PM2.5 (r = .26, p = .009). IL-8 was negatively associated with monthly PM2.5 (r = -.23, p = .02). PEP was positively related to daily (r = .29, p = .001) and monthly PM2.5 (r = .18, p = .044). CAR was negatively associated with daily PM2.5 (r = -.29, p = .001). IL-10, TNFα, RSA, and CAB were not associated with PM2.5. Air pollution may increase risk of inflammation in children.

Attachment theorists have long recognized that multiple attachments characterize the typical experience of most children. But an appreciation of attachment networks is new, and this commentary draws on some of the most theoretically provocative themes of the contributions to this special issue. These include: how the quality of attachment relationships and the contexts of their development colors the security derived from them and the developmental outcomes they influence; the impact of relationships on other relationships in the attachment network; and the multiple ways attachment theory can influence public policy for children and families.

From the beginning, theories of attachment and caregiving have given rise to questions about minimum and maximum numbers of attachment figures. The child's tendency to direct attachment behavior to a specific figure rather than to whoever is nearby has led to the idea of monotropy, suggesting that a child would thrive best with one special attachment figure. From an evolutionary perspective kinship caregiving networks are more plausible as they would increase the chances of survival, and in hunter-gatherer and agricultural communities paternal care and kinship networks providing care for young children were indeed common. A recent development in cultural evolution is the invention of organized day care and children's homes and institutions. Although the attachment network may increase in size with the child's cognitive development, research on institutionalized care demonstrates that high numbers of caregivers preclude secure attachments. The limiting factor to attachment networks may however not be the number of caregivers, but the opportunities for the child to learn contingencies in social relationships that have an attachment component.

Grandmothers are important in Chinese families. This study explored the early emerging mother-grandmother-infant network and its association with child's socioemotional development in multigenerational families in a non-WEIRD country. The analytic sample included 60 children (T1: M_age  = 6.5 months) and their caregivers residing in Beijing. Measures used were the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP), the Lausanne Trilogue Play (LTP), the Maternal Behavior Q-Sort (MBQS), and the Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment. Structural equation and path modeling revealed that (1) more grandmaternal neutral/watching coparenting behaviors at the first assessment were related to more secure infant-mother attachment relationships at the second assessment (T2: M_age  = 1 year); (2) maternal sensitivity at T2 was a partial mediator between earlier undermining and neutral/watching coparenting behaviors and young children's externalizing problems at the final assessment (T3: M_age  = 2 years). Findings are discussed in terms of the roles played by mother-grandmother coparenting network in the children's socioemotional development.

This meta-analytic study examined the associations between child-father attachment in early childhood and children's externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. Based on 15 samples (N = 1,304 dyads), the association between child-father attachment insecurity and externalizing behaviors was significant and moderate in magnitude (r = 0.18, 95% CI: 0.10, 0.27 or d = 0.37, 95% CI: 0.20, 0.55). No moderators of this association were identified. Based on 12 samples (N = 1,073), the association between child-father attachment insecurity and internalizing behaviors was also significant, albeit smaller in magnitude (r = 0.09, 95% CI: 0.02, 0.15; or d = 0.17, 95% CI: 0.03, 0.31). Between-study heterogeneity was insufficient to consider moderators. When compared to the effect sizes of prior meta-analyses on child-mother attachment and behavior problems, the quality of the attachment relationship with fathers yields a similar magnitude of associations to children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Results support the need to consider the role of the attachment network, which notably includes attachment relationships to both fathers and mothers, to understand how attachment relationships contribute to child development.

Early attachment has been commonly hypothesized to predict children's future developmental outcomes, and robust evidence relying on assessments of single caregiver-child attachment patterns has corroborated this hypothesis. Nevertheless, most often children are raised by multiple caregivers, and they tend to form attachment bonds with more than one of them. In this paper, we briefly describe the conceptual and empirical roots underlying the notion of attachment networks to multiple caregivers. We detail potential reasons for research focusing on a single caregiver (most often mothers, but recently also fathers) and the historical attempts to establish a more ecologically valid assessment of attachment to multiple caregivers. Finally, we describe a recently developed organizational framework that includes testable models on which future research may rely for assessing the predictive power of attachment networks to multiple caregivers on children's developmental outcomes.

Attachment theory, research, and assessments have become increasingly applied to settle child custody cases. We discuss such applications in relation to admissibility criteria for scientific evidence and testimony proposed by Faigman et al. (2014). We argue that attachment theory and research can provide valid "framework evidence"; group-based attachment research has yielded general principles suitable as a frame of reference for pertinent court decisions. In particular, child custody decision-making should generally be guided by research indicating that children benefit from attachment networks. In contrast, assessments of attachment quality fall short of providing valid "diagnostic evidence"; information that a specific individual/dyad is a "true" instance of a general group-level principle. In particular, such assessments do not yield valid information about whether a particular caregiver has better caregiving skills than another caregiver and will better support child development. We conclude that attachment theory and research should be admissible for framework but not for diagnostic testimony.