Developmental Review最新文献

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Because child-directed speech (CDS) is ubiquitous in some cultures and because positive associations between certain features of the language input and certain learning outcomes have been attested it has often been claimed that the function of CDS is to aid children’s language development in general. We argue that for this claim to be generalisable, superior learning from CDS compared to non-CDS, such as adult-directed speech (ADS), must be demonstrated across multiple input domains and learning outcomes. To determine the availability of such evidence we performed a study space analysis of the research literature on CDS. A total of 942 relevant papers were coded with respect to (i) CDS features under consideration, (ii) learning outcomes and (iii) whether a comparison between CDS and ADS was reported. The results show that only 16.2% of peer-reviewed studies in this field compared learning outcomes between CDS and ADS, almost half of which focussed on the ability to discriminate between the two registers. Crucially, we found only 20 studies comparing learning outcomes between CDS and ADS for morphosyntactic and lexico-semantic features and none for pragmatic and extra-linguistic features. Although these 20 studies provided preliminary evidence for a facilitative effect of some specific morphosyntactic and lexico-semantic features, overall CDS-ADS comparison studies are very unevenly distributed across the space of CDS features and outcome measures. The disproportional emphasis on prosodic, phonetic, and phonological input features, and register discrimination as the outcome invites caution with respect to the generalisability of the claim that CDS facilitates language development across the breadth of input domains and learning outcomes. Future research ought to resolve the discrepancy between sweeping claims about the function of CDS as facilitating language development on the one hand and the narrow evidence base for such a claim on the other by conducting CDS-ADS comparisons across a wider range of input features and outcome measures.

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.

Increased lifespan in the population was historically driven by reductions in infant mortality but is now driven by reduced mortality in older adults. Research is beginning to show reduced incidence of many age-related diseases, but there have been some mixed trends observed in assessment of cognitive ability in healthy ageing research. Across three studies, time-based trends in older adults’ cognition were assessed. In a meta-analysis of literature largely studying different waves of longitudinal data, Study 1 showed cognitive improvement in later-recruited waves of older adults compared to earlier-recruited waves. In a second meta-analysis of studies comparing young and older adults’ cognition, Study 2 showed that age-related cognitive deficits were becoming smaller over time. Finally, in an analysis of historic data from a single laboratory, Study 3 confirmed the findings of Study 2 and demonstrated that time-based reductions in age-related cognitive deficits were largely driven by improvement in cognition over time in older groups, whilst young adults’ cognition remained relatively flat across time. It is argued that later tested groups of older adults are benefiting from environmental advantages to cognition (e.g., education, healthcare, nutrition) that might previously have mainly applied to young adult groups in research. These results have implications for cognitive ageing research which will likely yield smaller age differences than historic work. It is also argued that definitions of cognitive impairment related to dementia diagnosis may need to be periodically revised.

The approximate number system (ANS) is a hypothesized mechanism responsible for the representation and processing of numerical information in an imprecise fashion. According to the predominant theory, the ANS is essential in solving simple numerical tasks such as comparing which of two quantities is numerically larger, and some research has indicated that individual differences in its acuity influence higher-level mathematical performance. Because of this far-reaching role of the ANS, it is essential to assess its acuity with measures that are reliable, and valid. The present work reviews and synthesizes many of the methodological problems that are relevant for measuring ANS acuity in young children. We discuss issues related to task comprehension, the role of non-numerical perceptual properties of the stimuli, the role of inhibition, and the appropriateness and reliability of the ANS acuity indices. Recommendations and open questions are summarized.

Cumulative science hinges on consolidating empirical evidence. However, both narrative reviews and meta-analyses often restrict integration by using construct labels in searches, which vary greatly across traditions and eras in psychology. A complementary approach is the mapping review, more common in other disciplines, which focuses on operational definitions and experimental design. Here, we pioneered using this approach in experimental psychology, applying it to memory development. We classified 506 publications in the last 5 decades using 16 design features and identified methodologically convergent work that originated from different theoretical frameworks. New insights emerge from this approach. First, characterizing the relative data density along each dimension of experimental design identifies where future research is most necessary. Second, we linked relevant evidence previously separated by nonoverlapping construct labels. Third, we illustrated the potential application of this technique as a precursor to subsequent research syntheses with an analysis of the development of pattern separation (also called mnemonic discrimination). To facilitate the process of literature integration and identification of methodological overlap, we have created a freely available interactive web application using the current database.