Infant and Child Development最新文献

Different components of emotional responding may be affected by using specific emotion regulation strategies that enable children's volitional self-regulation. This study examined the affective, cognitive, and physiological effects of experimentally instructing children to deploy distraction or reappraisal to regulate negative emotion during an evocative film clip. One-hundred eighty-four 4- to 11-year-old children [M = 7.66 years; SD = 2.33 years; 94 girls; mixed race (36%), Latino/Latina (30%), European American (19%), African American (11%), Asian American (2%), or other (2%)] participated. Neither strategy affected observed distress or self-reported negative emotion. Relative to a control condition, children instructed to use reappraisal reported attenuated rumination. Distraction also predicted attenuated rumination, as well as a pattern of parasympathetic reactivity indicative of disengagement that correlated with parents' reported use of minimizing and punitive emotion socialization practices. Findings underscore the utility of multi-method approaches that examine parasympathetic activity in conjunction with volitional measures of self-regulation.

Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia Reactivity (RSA-R) correlates both positively and negatively with externalizing behaviour in autistic individuals. These inconsistencies may result from task-based differences. This pilot study measured RSA-R in 4-to 6-year-olds, across two timepoints, using four validated tasks with matched baseline and challenge periods. Social, cognitive, sensory and emotional tasks were employed to evaluate the use of a domain-specific approach in measuring RSA-R in young autistic children. RSA and parent-reported externalizing behaviour were collected from 16 children (M _age = 5.60 years; 13 male; 12 White/Caucasian; 15 non-Hispanic/Latine). RSA-R was measured by the difference score of the challenge task minus its corresponding comparison task. Correlations were computed to evaluate associations between RSA-R and behaviour. RSA was reliably measured for 3/4 tasks (0.694 ≤ intraclass correlation coefficients [ICCs] ≤ 0.896). Only RSA-R during a social task correlated with externalizing behaviour. These results support using a battery that measures a range of challenges, differing in social demands, to characterize how arousal contributes to emotion regulation demands among young autistic children.

Symbolic and situational mathematics are the two major representations of mathematical knowledge. Although previous literature has studied the relationship between the two from the perspective of teaching practice, learning effectiveness and behavioural performance, there is still a lack of empirical psychological research on cognitive mechanisms to explore the psychological processes of the two. The current study investigated the relationship between symbolic and situational mathematics by determining the differences in cognitive correlates between the two in fourth-grade children. Their symbolic and situational mathematics abilities were assessed using symbolic and situational enumeration tests under the same conditions. Several types of general cognitive abilities, language processing and academic achievements were also examined. Results showed that both situational and symbolic mathematics are crucial for mathematical achievement. Arithmetic computation is closely correlated with symbolic mathematics, whereas spatial processing and inductive reasoning ability are uniquely correlated with situational mathematics. The results suggest that situational and symbolic mathematics have separate cognitive correlates, which means the two are distinct in terms of psychological processing.

Because the COVID-19 pandemic has been implicated in increased mental health concerns for families of low income, we aimed to describe maternal perspectives about the pandemic's impact on their kindergartener's mental health during the 2020–2021 school year. We conducted 22 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with U.S. mothers with low income who had kindergarten-age children (50% male and 50% female). All participants were female, ranging in age from 24 to 44 years, and reported the following ethnic/racial identities: non-Hispanic Black or African American (41%), Hispanic of any race (36%) and non-Hispanic, White (23%). With a team comprising multiple researchers from varied disciplines (e.g., medicine, education and public health) our analytic process used an iterative approach for developing and revising codes and themes until we reached thematic saturation. Most mothers described negative impacts on social, behavioural and emotional aspects of mental health. Some described positive social impacts, including strengthened family relationships. Mothers described no positive changes to behavioural or emotional aspects of mental health. Maternal perspectives suggest the importance of prioritising access to screening and treating mental health needs to support children's kindergarten transition, mitigate pandemic impacts and plan for future disruptions.

In the still-face episode of the Face-to-Face/Still-Face (FFSF), parents are asked to become unresponsive. However, infant–parent interaction may be irrepressible, and there is some evidence that interaction during the still-face is associated with attachment outcome. To explore these questions, we independently coded the continuous affective valence (negative to positive) of seventy-three 6-month-old infants (45 males; 36 Hispanic/Latinx; 38 White, 3 Black/African-American, 2 Asian, 30 multiracial) and their parents (M_age = 36 years; 5 males; 30 Hispanic/Latinx; 65 White, 3 Black/African-American, 2 Asian, 2 unknown) during the FFSF and assessed attachment at 15 months with the Strange Situation Procedure (n = 66). There was a mean positive correlation between moment-to-moment parent and infant affective valence, indicating synchronous affective interaction during the still-face (d = 0.63). Higher levels of affect interaction during the still-face episode were detected in infants later classified as disorganised compared to securely attached (d = 0.97). Findings underscore the importance of testing for still-face interaction and suggest that this interaction may be an unappreciated predictor of infant attachment outcomes.

A student's socioeconomic status (SES) has a significant relation to their academic achievement. Much of this work has explored this in math and reading, but less is known about how SES relates to science achievement, particularly in the early grades. Using quantile regression with nationally representative data, we explored this relation in 12,676 kindergarten students (51.2% boys, 52.2% White, 21.8% Hispanic, 12.7% Black and 6.6% Asian) and 10,339 fifth-grade students (51.3% boys, 49.4 White, 27.2% Hispanic, 9.4% Black and 8.2% Asian). We found less variability in science achievement scores for those high on SES than those low on SES. The scores of the high SES students cluster together on the high end of science achievement, whilst those from low SES score across the distribution. These findings highlight the need to explore what can mitigate the relation between SES and science achievement and where resources to support science achievement are most needed.

It is known that infant-directed speech (IDS) plays a key role in language development. Previous research, however, has also identified significant variability across societies in terms of how often IDS occurs. For example, some studies report very little IDS in non-western, small-scale societies – including children growing up in small-scale societies in Tanna, Vanuatu. This is surprising given that IDS is widely assumed as a common feature of human caregiving based on research conducted in urbanised populations which are more well-studied. Here, we propose that IDS is only one of a suite of important caregiving behaviours that are produced during interactions with infants, which may vary by culture, perhaps being replaced by other, non-verbal infant-directed behaviours (IDB). We will examine previously collected data consisting of 94 semi-structured 10-min video observations of caregivers and their 18–24 month-old children in rural Tanna, Vanuatu and urban Vancouver, Canada to identify and compare the proportion of time caregivers spend engaging in IDS and IDB during these interactions, both within and between societies. We define IDS as caregiver speech or vocalisations during the interaction with the infant, and we define IDB as non-verbal behaviours that are produced with the infant during the interaction. This study aims to take a step towards a more generalised understanding of language development in children, moving beyond the urban and western societies in which our understanding of development is currently based, and the predicted results will aid in recognising different developmental pathways within multi-cultural communities.