Infant and Child Development最新文献

A growing number of early childhood interventions are intended to be used by classroom teachers to support children's emergent literacy development, yet we know little about for whom such interventions might be effective. In this study, we examined whether children's initial emergent literacy skills (alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, vocabulary) moderated the effects of a small-group emergent literacy intervention. Preschool children (M_age = 4.28 years) identified as at-risk for later reading difficulties (n = 281; 48% girls; 45% Black, 20% White, 13% Hispanic/Latinx) were randomly assigned to intervention conditions or a business-as-usual control condition. Using an instrumental variables approach to account for differences in intervention dosage, we found main effects of initial skills (ds = 0.07–0.27) but no evidence of differential response to intervention based on initial skills (ds < |0.01|). We call for further attention to this important issue in future intervention work.

This study examined how established adult offspring born to lesbian parents cope with the renewed anti-LGBTQ+ oppression in the United States. The study included 75 adults in their early thirties (M = 30.93, SD = 0.92; 49.33% female, 48.00% male and 2.66% gender non-binary; 90.67% White, 9.33% people of colour) from Wave 7 of the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study. Even though the majority of the offspring (68%) are heterosexual and no longer live at home, their awareness of homophobic discrimination against their parents may have a negative effect on their mental health. We hypothesised that coping strategies, such as educating others about discrimination or actively resisting it, could reduce the negative impact of perceived stigma on their mental health. Surprisingly, the results showed that adult offspring who coped through educating reported lower life satisfaction when they perceived higher levels of stigma. There were no significant findings relating to psychological distress. The results indicate the importance of studying families with minoritised sexual identities during a time of anti-LGBTQ+ laws and policies.

Selecting whose words to trust profoundly impacts children's learning behaviours. This study investigated Western and East Asian children's trust preferences for informants based on social dominance and its potential association with cultural factors. Sixty-six European American children in the United States (M = 5.44 years, SD = 0.80 years) and 69 Han Chinese children in China (M = 5.42 years, SD = 0.73 years) were introduced to a dominant puppet with decision-making power over a subordinate puppet. The puppets provided conflicting explanations about novel tools, and children indicated whose explanations they trusted. Both American and Chinese children preferred to trust the dominant puppet over the subordinate puppet. Although Chinese parents exhibited higher levels of authoritarianism compared to European American parents, this cultural difference was not significantly associated with children's trust preferences for the dominant informant. This research enriches our understanding of how informants' social power influences children's learning process across diverse cultures.

This study examines the childhood experiences of LGBT+ adults who were born and raised in Turkey and spent their childhood and adolescence in Turkey within the framework of family, friendship, education, life, and social spheres. The research group consists of 11 participants aged between 18 and 30, 10 of whom are still living in Turkey and 1 of whom moved abroad in adulthood. The participants were selected by snowball sampling method. The research was conducted based on a phenomenological design, which is a qualitative research method. One-to-one in-depth interviews were conducted with each participant. The findings reveal that the participants were exposed to gender norms in their family, friends, educational, and social environments and that this significantly affected their self-discovery processes from an early age. It was determined that the ‘coming out’ processes and social acceptance of the participants spread over a long period of time. The research highlights the urgent need for structural reforms to protect the rights of LGBT+ children and increase social acceptance.

On a daily basis, children make decisions about how to negotiate their physical environment. Sometimes they engage in physical tasks that involve risk, requiring them to judge the safety of how to negotiate the environment safely. Individual differences in children's age, sex, physical size, and personality may impact those decisions. We used fully immersive virtual reality to assess 7–10-year-olds' (n = 393; mean age = 8.8 years, SD = 0.8; 50% female) behaviour while stepping across rocks to cross a simulated river. Children's self-reported thrill and intensity seeking (TIS) personality was also collected. Three outcomes were considered: rocks stepped on, time evaluating the crossing, and time crossing. On average, children used 5 of 7 rocks, spent 7.8 s assessing, and 18.7 s crossing, with substantial individual variations. Taller children crossed using fewer rocks, but this association was subsumed in multivariable models by male gender and higher TIS personality (e.g., β = −5.2 and −2.6, respectively, predicting crossing time). Results have implications for child development theory, injury prevention, playground design, and parenting decisions.

Children are vulnerable to disease, yet are poor at recognising and avoiding sickness. Thus, the current study aims to recruit 5- to 9-year-olds (anticipated 50% female, 60% White, 60% Hispanic/Latine) to test whether children's sickness perception is malleable and can be improved through training. We created developmentally appropriate stories and games for children, based on training methods that improve adults' sickness perception. We hypothesise that children randomly assigned to engage in the disease-prime training will, like adults, display more accurate sick face perception compared to participants in a control condition. If children do show improvements, this would suggest that their sickness perception is malleable. In contrast, if they do not show improvements, this may suggest an increase in malleability with age. Developing effective interventions for children's pathogen avoidance that account for the flexibility (or lack thereof) of children's disease detection systems may reduce disease transmission and improve public health.

Recent research on advanced theory of mind (ToM) has questioned the extent to which existing ToM measures capture a single construct, particularly for groups understudied in developmental research. The present study examined the factor structure of one of the most commonly used advanced ToM measures, the Strange Stories task, in samples of low- and middle-income children in dual-language Spanish-English schools in US–Mexico border communities and in Mexico (N = 237 children, n = 108 male, n = 129 female, M_age = 10.05 years, SD = 1.15 years; 96.3% Hispanic/Latine). No clear factor structure emerged for the Strange Stories in the full sample. Comparing across sociocultural contexts, item scores and inter-item relations showed distinct patterns even when comparing low- and middle-SES schools within the same community. These findings have implications both for ToM assessment broadly and for mapping the interplay between sociocultural contexts and advanced ToM.

Previous research showed that short-term second language training modulates children's brain responses to language processing. However, little is known about whether short-term training from language-immersion apps would have the same effect on young children's neural processing of a newly learnt language. We examined the auditory event-related potentials generated by two groups of 3- to 5-year-old children (total N = 32; 14 male, 18 female; mean age = 49.6 months, SD = 6.0 months), in response to known and unknown non-native language words. The ‘known’ word stimuli were previously exposed to the children via either the ELLA language immersion applications (‘ELLA’ group) or flash cards (‘FLASH’ group). Electroencephalography data were analysed within early (200–300 ms) and late (400–600 and 600–800 ms) time-windows, to determine the main and interaction effects of group (ELLA vs. FLASH) and condition (KNOWN vs. UNKNOWN). We found that the early positive potential (of both groups) for the known words was significantly larger than that for the unknown words. Further, the early negative potential of the apps group was significantly larger than that of the flash card group. Our study showed that short-term training with language-immersion apps modulates language processing in preschool children's brains differently compared to digital flash cards.