Developmental Review最新文献

Everyone agrees that environments influence learning, but only a small percentage of studies of cognitive development relate children’s specific learning environments to their learning. In this article, I examine relations to math learning of two types of specific learning environments: math textbooks and home math environments. The strength of the relations appears to differ for the two types of environments; characteristics of math textbooks seem to play an important role in shaping school-age children’s arithmetic with whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and percentages, but characteristics of home math environments seem to be only weakly related to preschoolers’ math knowledge. The differences cannot be attributed entirely to differences in the children’s ages or to difficulties in measuring preschoolers’ mathematics knowledge; studies relating preschoolers’ literacy environments to their reading comprehension yield much stronger relations, and measurement of preschoolers’ math knowledge is sufficiently valid to yield substantial relations to the same children’s math knowledge in elementary and high school. Two types of issues are identified that seem to contribute to the differing relations of the specific learning environments to children’s mathematics knowledge: issues involving measurement of specific learning environments and influences of unmeasured variables. Relating learning environments to learning is likely to be useful for understanding cognitive development in other domains as well.

Parenting behaviors have been recognized as a significant contributor to the development of executive function (EF) skills in children. These contributions encompass various socioemotionally and cognitively oriented behaviors. In this comprehensive review, we examine the existing literature on cognitively oriented parenting behaviors and identify three principal dimensions: cognitive stimulation, language input, and scaffolding/autonomy support. We discuss the conceptual and methodological overlap among these behaviors while emphasizing the distinct aspects of each and their potential contributions to EF development. A conceptual framework is then proposed which elucidates the interrelatedness of these behaviors and their association with child EF development. Within this framework, cognitive stimulation, language input, and scaffolding/autonomy support are reframed as opportunities, tools, and strategies for problem solving, respectively. This perspective underscores the elaborative nature of these behaviors and suggesting that they not only do they make independent contributions to EF skills but may also interact to facilitate EF development. Lastly, we explore practical, methodological, and cross-cultural implications arising from this framework.

Developmental psychology and cultural evolution are concerned with the same research questions but rarely interact. Collaboration between these fields could lead to substantial progress. Developmental psychology and related fields such as educational science and linguistics explore how behavior and cognition develop through combinations of social and individual experiences and efforts. Human developmental processes display remarkable plasticity, allowing children to master complex tasks, many which are of recent origin and not part of our biological history, such as mental arithmetic or pottery. It is this potency of human developmental mechanisms that allow humans to have culture on a grand scale. Biological evolution would only establish such plasticity if the combinatorial problems associated with flexibility could be solved, biological goals be reasonably safeguarded, and cultural transmission faithful. We suggest that cultural information can guide development in similar way as genes, provided that cultural evolution can establish productive transmission/teaching trajectories that allow for incremental acquisition of complex tasks. We construct a principle model of development that fulfills the needs of both subjects that we refer to as Incremental Functional Development. This process is driven by an error-correcting mechanism that attempts to fulfill combinations of cultural and inborn goals, using cultural information about structure. It supports the acquisition of complex skills. Over generations, it maintains function rather than structure, and this may solve outstanding issues about cultural transmission. The presence of cultural goals gives the mechanisms an open architecture that become an engine for cultural evolution.

We present a fluency framework of the development of affective preferences and beliefs, two domains often neglected in research on development. Fluency is the subjective ease with which a mental operation can be executed. The fluency framework of the development of preferences and beliefs starts from evidence that effects of fluency are present early in infancy and remain stable across the lifespan. The framework predicts that interindividual differences in preferences and beliefs will be few among newborns but increase with age, a process we call differentiation. Such differentiation goes along with what we call mental narrowing, which denotes the observation that preferences and beliefs become narrower in range and less flexible with increasing age. Therefore, with increasing age, fewer new preferences or beliefs develop, and it is more difficult to change them. We discuss alternative explanations for differentiation and mental narrowing and outline empirical tests for the predictions.

Attachment theory and the model of compensatory Internet use provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the relationship between attachment and problematic Internet use. Despite numerous studies on this topic, the findings have been inconsistent. To address this gap, we conducted a multilevel meta-analysis and explored the associations between various attachment orientations and types of problematic Internet use. A systematic database search identified 167 studies published prior to March 2024, including 173 samples comprising 516 effect sizes. The results revealed a negative correlation between attachment security and problematic Internet use (r = −.202). Conversely, attachment anxiety and avoidance exhibited positive correlations with problematic Internet addiction. Specifically, attachment anxiety demonstrated a medium to large positive correlation with problematic Internet addiction (r = .288), while attachment avoidance exhibited a relatively small positive correlation (r = .123). Moreover, we identified several moderating variables, including types of problematic Internet use, measurements of attachment, attachment figure, culture, participant age and gender that influenced the relationship between attachment and problematic Internet use. These findings provide empirical support for the close links between attachment and problematic Internet use. The implications for future research and clinical practice are discussed.

The question of how young infants learn to imitate others’ facial expressions has been central in developmental psychology for decades. Facial imitation has been argued to constitute a particularly challenging learning task for infants because facial expressions are perceptually opaque: infants cannot see changes in their own facial configuration when they execute a motor program, so how do they learn to match these gestures with those of their interacting partners? Here we argue that this apparent paradox mainly appears if one focuses only on the visual modality, as most existing work in this field has done so far. When considering other modalities, in particular the auditory modality, many facial expressions are not actually perceptually opaque. In fact, every orolabial expression that is accompanied by vocalisations has specific acoustic consequences, which means that it is relatively transparent in the auditory modality. Here, we describe how this relative perceptual transparency can allow infants to accrue experience relevant for orolabial, facial imitation every time they vocalise. We then detail two specific mechanisms that could support facial imitation learning through the auditory modality. First, we review evidence showing that experiencing correlated proprioceptive and auditory feedback when they vocalise – even when they are alone – enables infants to build audio-motor maps that could later support facial imitation of orolabial actions. Second, we show how these maps could also be used by infants to support imitation even for silent, orolabial facial expressions at a later stage. By considering non-visual perceptual domains, this paper expands our understanding of the ontogeny of facial imitation and offers new directions for future investigations.

Early environmental experiences influence children’s cognitive and neural development. In particular, cognitive stimulation, defined as environmental inputs that engage the senses and provide learning opportunities for children, fosters acquisition of knowledge across various cognitive domains. Low levels of cognitive stimulation in early life may restrict learning opportunities, contributing to lasting consequences for neural development and later academic and occupational achievement. This review delves into the role of cognitive stimulation in neural development and related cognitive performance, available tools for measuring cognitive stimulation in various settings, and offers insights into future research directions. In addition, variability in cognitive stimulation, often linked to differences in socioeconomic status, may create disparities in children’s access to enriching experiences that provide the foundation for learning. We therefore briefly review the role of socioeconomic status in cognitive stimulation and cognitive development. We also leverage evidence from intervention studies to illustrate the importance of cognitive stimulation for children’s outcomes. Investigating the influence of cognitive stimulation on children’s brain and behavior development is crucial for developing effective intervention strategies to foster the healthy development of all children and unlocking their full potential.

The quality of parent-infant interaction is crucial for infant development, and the postpartum period is considered particularly important for subsequent developmental pathways. Parental mentalizing has been identified as a key component influencing parental behavior. Yet, no meta-analysis has specifically focused on the link between parental mentalizing and observed parental behavior during parent-infant interaction in the first year postpartum. The present study addresses this gap by conducting a meta-analysis of 20 studies involving mothers and their 0–12 months old infants. A three-level random effects analysis, encompassing 133 individual effect sizes and 1990 participants, revealed a small, positive overall effect size (r = 0.20). Moderator analyses investigated the influence of study methodology (e.g., offline versus online assessment of mentalizing, free-play interaction versus non-free play), sample and study characteristics on effect size. Using meta-regression, significant moderators were maternal SES risk-status and study publication year, while study methodology and other sample and study characteristics did not moderate the association. The study advances our understanding of parental mentalizing and parenting behavior in the postpartum period, providing methodological considerations for mentalizing assessment. Results are discussed in terms of implications and recommendations for future research.

We review existing research on intertemporal choice in children that has used delay choice tasks, a type of delay gratification task that typically involves choosing between a smaller reward now and a larger reward later. We align developmental research with some of the large body of empirical and theoretical work in this area that has been conducted with adults, with a focus on methodological appropriateness, the effectiveness of experimental manipulations, and role of future thinking processes in intertemporal choice. We conclude that, with care, it is possible to use delay discounting tasks with children from around 8 years that are similar to those that have been used with adults; simpler delay choice tasks are likely to yield robust data from around 3 years. Experimental manipulations to enhance performance have generally been less successful with child populations than adults, but there is some evidence that learning-based and framing approaches can increase the likelihood that children delay gratification. We outline a detailed theoretical framework, based on existing research with adults, that describes the various ways in which future thinking processes may contribute to intertemporal choice, and argue that some of these processes may develop relatively late. This means that the nature of the relation between future thinking and intertemporal choice may change substantially with development.

Over- and under-eating in response to subjective emotional states (emotional eating) are well described behaviours that are thought to emerge early in life. Research and theory have proposed that individual characteristics and environmental factors (e.g. parental feeding practices) both contribute to the development of emotional eating. However, the mechanisms underlying this development are poorly understood. Here, we review relevant literature that pertains to factors and processes involved in the development of emotional eating and propose a comprehensive model suggesting how emotional eating develops throughout infancy and childhood. Within the model, we describe the biological and environmental factors that could impact a child’s probability for emotional eating. We identify key mechanisms that may influence how these factors lead to emotional eating, such as interoceptive processing, emotion regulation and appetite self-regulation. We put forward the idea that emotional eating is a context dependent behaviour, with the extent of emotional eating likely influenced by contextual factors operating in conjunction with key mechanisms. Lastly, we offer potential pathways through which emotional eating develops as a learnt behaviour. The proposed model provides a comprehensive explanation that considers the complexity of emotional eating behaviours and generates novel ideas for future research.