Infant and Child Development最新文献

There is a vital need to conduct age-appropriate programs that are suited to a child's stage of development in which the child, the parents, the school, and the community can work together to prevent sexual abuse. The ‘My Body is Safe’ program for parents and children seeks to provide children with the skills of self-protection. The participants in the study were 70 preschool children of the ages 4–6. The data for the study, which was conducted over the period March–May 2022, were collected with a Parent and Child Information Form and the ‘What If Situation Test’. Following a pretest administered to the experimental and control groups, the experimental group was offered six 20-min ‘My Body is Safe’ program sessions. To evaluate the effectiveness of the program, a posttest was administered at the end of the sixth session and a follow-up test 2 months later. The mean age of the children participating in the study was 5.58 ± 0.52. It was observed following the program that the scores of the experimental group on all the subscales of the What If Test had increased significantly (p < 0.05). No change was seen in the scores of the control group (p > 0.05). The ‘My Body is Safe’ program is an effective program for developing children's self-protection skills. It is recommended that nurse-led body safety training is included in school curriculums and widely provided to preschool children.

The present study explores how gender role attitudes and beliefs shape caregiving and parenting practices among low-income caregivers in Bogotá and Malambo, Colombia, and considers their implications for children's early socialisation. Through a feminist and sociocultural lens, the research uncovers how caregivers actively negotiate, often inconsistently, between gender-stereotypical and counter-stereotypical aspirations and behaviours. The findings reveal persistent tensions between parents' stated commitments to gender equality and the subtle ways in which gendered expectations continue to structure everyday parenting practices. Influences such as formal employment, family structure, child gender, intergenerational norms, and geographic location were identified as key factors in shaping how gender is lived and reproduced in the home. By amplifying the voices of mothers and fathers in two culturally distinct Colombian communities, this study addresses a critical gap in the literature and contributes to a more contextually grounded understanding of gendered parenting. It offers valuable insights for designing gender-transformative policies and interventions rooted in the lived realities of families in the Majority World.

Object exploration affords rich opportunities for learning across the first years of life. During object play, infants use different combinations of fingers, different roles for each hand, and will deconstruct object parts—these fine-grained differences comprise the construct manipulation complexity (MC). We examined MC in a sample of 90 typically developing infants (47 males; 75% White) assessed at six monthly visits from 9 to 14 months of age from a battery of eight objects. Guttman analyses found that MC is cumulative, meaning that infants can do the most complex manipulation skill if they are able to also do all the lower ranked manipulation skills. The order from least complex to most complex was: (1) bimanual manipulation, (2) bimanual manipulation with distinct roles for each hand, (3) object deconstruction, and (4) independent digit movement. These results introduce a new framework for describing fine motor skills in infant manipulation.

We investigate whether quality of early care and education, measured using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), predicted gains in toddlers' and preschoolers' vocabulary and self-regulation over 7 months. The sample consists of 318 toddlers (M age = 26 months; 46% female; 56% dual language learner) and 569 preschoolers (M age = 44 months; 51% female; 71% dual language learner), attending 89 toddler and 124 preschool classrooms in Oslo, Norway. Using mixed effect linear regression analyses, among toddlers, higher learning support on CLASS predicted gains in vocabulary. Among preschoolers, higher classroom organisation and instructional support on CLASS predicted gains in self-regulation skills. Implications of these findings for the developmental needs of toddlers and preschoolers, and the use of CLASS as a classroom quality measurement tool, are discussed.

There is a relationship between the emotional valence of a word and its surrounding context in adult language, and context valence predicts how well adults learn new words. We asked whether this extends to children. Using a large corpus of stories written by children (N = 103,541; ~55 million words, ages 7–13), we found a positive correlation between word and context valence (r = 0.46), which was stable across age. We then conducted a pre-registered word learning experiment investigating how emotional narrative context shapes learning of novel adjectives during independent reading. Children (N = 120, age 7–11 years, 59 girls, ethnic information not collected) read 15 novel words embedded in 30 short narratives of either neutral, negative, or positive valence. We found that children inferred word valence from narrative context, demonstrating that context valence is an effective cue for word learning. Children learned novel adjectives, and older children outperformed younger children in word recognition and valence judgment. Novel adjectives read in more emotional (positive/negative) contexts were recognised more accurately than those in neutral narratives (Odds Ratios = 1.39–1.60). We discuss how affective associations build from children's experience of words in emotional contexts, consistent with affective embodiment supporting children's learning of abstract concepts.