Developmental Review最新文献

Infants are thought to possess an innate specific capacity to process numerical information. In this article, we review the past research that has focused on unveiling the timing and localization of the related brain mechanisms with the purpose of depicting a neurodevelopmental blueprint of this capacity from birth. A systematic search of studies published between 1998 and 2023 was conducted. A total of 21 studies with 732 participants (age rage: 30 weeks of gestation to 6 years) met the study selection criterion. EEG, fMRI and fNIRS studies consistently support the existence of brain responses (mainly in the right parietal, bilateral frontal and occipital cortex) that reflect sensitivity to numerical features even before birth. These enable the infant brain to code numerical information independently of other non-numerical magnitude dimensions. Small (<4) or large (>4) numerosities seem to diverge in dissociable brain responses from the second semester of life, suggesting a neurodevelopmental specialization. Variations in the brain’s sensitivity to numerical information across participants and whether they can anticipate the individual’s development of future numerical skills remains uncertain, due to the scarcity of longitudinal studies. Understanding how familial and other contextual factors shape these initial biological predispositions and give rise to typical and atypical trajectories requires further investigation.

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.