Developmental Review最新文献

Judith Harris’ theory of child socialization spans developmental periods and has interdisciplinary implications. Though broad and adaptable, her theory has not been readily adopted by criminologists, and its discussion is often limited to its biosocial implications. The purpose of this essay is to discuss how Harris’ theory can help to explain the relationship between exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and negative outcomes in childhood and adolescence. Using Harris’ framework, I discuss how ACEs may reflect adversity in the home and community environment, how this exposure to adversity may impact child behavioral development and lead to school-based consequences, and how these consequences may ultimately shape child outcomes. I conclude by discussing the policy implications of Harris’ work, as well as directions for future research testing and/or informed by Harris’ arguments.

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.

The provocative hypotheses put forth in Harris (1998) spawned a great deal of criticism within the field of child development but far less in the field of behavior genetics, which generally found her arguments quite persuasive. I considered whether 21st century behavioral genetic literature and understandings continued to support her hypotheses, and generally concluded that they did not, at least in regards to child and adolescent psychopathology. Early interpretations of behavioral genetic findings were more limited in scope than they realized at the time, applied only to WEIRD populations, and may have overlooked key etiologic information contained in the mean. What’s more, even when restricting to standard behavioral genetic designs and interpretations in WEIRD data, there is good evidence that parenting behaviors do “causally” shape adolescent mental health outcomes to some degree, and relatively little evidence that peers socialize adolescents via non-shared environmental pathways. Put another way, although group socialization theory remains interesting and worthy of additional study, other key elements of Harris (1998) may have been overstated or have not stood the test of time.

The current article outlines a framework for a developmental hierarchy and the underlying interactions between variant lower-level elements that converge toward invariant higher-level attractors as defined by dynamical systems theory. More specifically, it explores human development in the context of environmental demands by highlighting the bidirectional influence between visual information and cognitive structures integrating these signals. Furthermore, it investigates the organizational structure of a developmental hierarchy and the integration of environmental information at specific stages by employing William Powers's Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) levels as the conceptual foundation. PCT asserts that the nervous system controls increasingly complex aspects of the environment by integrating its patterns into a control system hierarchy through negative feedback mechanisms. In this context, the article follows the progression of objective visual information from light intensity signals in the retina, leading to facial perceptions in the fusiform face area. It further tracks objective perceptual signals transforming into subjective social contingencies, such as parent–child relationships and group affiliation, before reaching areas of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex responsible for processing information about cultural norms at the highest cognitive stages. Thus, by integrating Powers's PCT levels of control into a developmental model, this article establishes a theoretical framework for systematically examining the organism-environment interactions that drive development through variant and invariant control mechanisms at each stage of the developmental hierarchy.

Human perceptual development evolves in a stereotyped fashion, with initially limited perceptual capabilities maturing over the months or years following the commencement of sensory experience into robust proficiencies. This review focuses on the functional significance of these developmental progressions. Specifically, we review findings from studies of children who have experienced alterations of early development, as well as results from corresponding computational models, which have recently provided compelling evidence that specific attributes of early sensory experience are likely to be important prerequisites for later developing skills in several perceptual domains such as vision and audition. Notably, the limitations of early sensory experience have therein emerged as scaffolds, rather than hurdles, being causally responsible for the acquisition of later perceptual proficiencies, while dispensing with these limitations has the perhaps counter-intuitive consequence of compromising later development. These results have implications for understanding why normal trajectories of perceptual development are sequenced in the way that they are, help account for the perceptual deficits observed in individuals with atypical histories of sensory development, and serve as guidelines for the creation of more robust and effective training procedures for computational learning systems.

The significance of self-control for essential life outcomes necessitates the study of its developmental pathways. In other words, other than discussions of the factors associated with self-control in different developmental periods, investigating the processes that lead to self-control development is also essential. To address this need, in this article, we present a conceptualization of trait self-control and its development using dynamic systems concepts and explore the aspects of this conceptualization by systematic simulation experiments of an agent-based model. Moreover, our focus in this article is on the adolescence period, which despite being a period of lasting changes, has received less attention on the subject of self-control development. Using an agent-based model of the parent-adolescent dyad, we show how moderate rule-setting can enhance self-control development. By simulating the processes that shape the adolescent’s trait self-control in the context of family, we provide a framework that could guide future theoretical and empirical studies of this critical ability.

Parental postpartum depression may be a risk factor for children’s early language development. However, previous empirical findings have been inconclusive regarding these relations. Moreover, previous reviews of this topic have summarized across measures of language. The purpose of the present systematic review was to summarize and synthesize the relations between parental postpartum depression and children’s language development while treating language as a multidimensional construct and while considering the nature of parental depression. We identified empirical articles in the PsycInfo®/ProQuest database (8/15/2023) and through additional strategies. Articles were screened and considered eligible for inclusion based on several criteria. Twenty-six studies were included in the present systematic review. Included articles were evaluated for risk bias using a tool produced by Glod and colleagues (2015) and adapted for the present study. Findings were organized by the aspect of language (i.e., receptive, expressive) and the nature of parents’ depression (timing, status, chronicity). Varying levels of support were found for the assertion that parental depression is related to children’s receptive and expressive language. Significant relations are more likely to be found later in early childhood indicating a delayed effect of parental postpartum depression. Further, there was inconclusive support concerning the role of depression status and depression chronicity in relation to children’s language development. Additional work is needed to clarify these relations. Directions for future work are recommended that would explore mediating mechanisms, the role of fathers’ depression and how other aspects of parental mental health play a role in these relations. As a limitation, the scope of the present systematic review excluded studies of older children and studies of more general language development that are relevant to informing future work.

An emerging body of research suggests that later-life cognitive functioning may be partly the result of influences across the life course. Low socioeconomic position in childhood is associated with disparities in cognitive functioning in older adulthood. Framed by the life course perspective, several explanations for this association exist: the latency model, positing that the conditions of low early-life socioeconomic position are directly linked to later-life cognitive functioning; the pathway hypothesis, suggesting that the association is mediated through adult socioeconomic position; and the accumulation of (dis)advantage hypothesis, proposing that the combined conditions of the childhood and adulthood contexts are more impactful than either socioeconomic context alone. The purpose of this critical review was to assess the empirical evidence supporting each hypothesis through a synthesis of the extant literature on the association between childhood socioeconomic position and later-life cognitive functioning. We reviewed 29 studies with U.S. samples and found the strongest evidence for the pathway hypothesis, followed by the accumulation hypothesis. Support for the latency model is present but weaker than the other explanations. The influence of childhood socioeconomic position on cognitive functioning is stronger when cognitive functioning is assessed at a single time point rather than as change over time, suggesting that childhood socioeconomic position might not affect the rate at which cognition declines in later life but does impact performance measured at any designated testing occasion. We conclude with a discussion of the limitations of the state of the literature, directions for future research, and implications for policy.

Extensive research from cognitive neuroscience has shown that episodic memory and future thinking are related processes and has given rise to theories attempting to explain these similarities, but developmental research has only minimally been considered. We argue that developmental research is fundamental to understanding the association between episodic memory and future thinking and that existing neurocognitive theories do not fully accommodate developmental findings. We review evidence from studies investigating children’s episodic memory, future thinking, and comparing across the two, as well as studies on the developing brain, and research with patients with brain lesions and individuals with autism spectrum disorder. These data provide an emerging but incomplete picture of the relation between memory and future thinking, and therefore we present a framework that deconstructs episodic thought into its separate components – who an episode is about, what happens in it, and when and where it occurs. We argue that episodic memory and future thinking place different demands on these subcomponents but are bound together by a shared episodic simulator that plays episodes to conscious awareness. We then provide a roadmap for future research that will clarify how memory and future thinking are related in development.

Because of executive function (EF) skills’ importance for social, emotional, and academic success, there is strong interest in supporting their development in early childhood. Efforts to increase the duration and/or intensity of children’s physical activity have been proposed as one promising approach. However, this proposal has been a source of debate, and too few studies have been conducted with young children to support recommendations in early childhood. Here, we provide a critical review of relevant studies. A recurring idea is that children’s fine and gross motor development represents a sequence of goal-directed activities that serve to engage and practice their EF skills. The development of children’s motor skills appears more strongly associated with EF skill development in early childhood than the frequency, duration, or intensity of their physical activity. We integrate these ideas into the larger literature and consider implications for research and practice.