Developmental Review最新文献

The purpose of this study was to investigate the three central components of conscience as outlined in integrative theory (i.e., empathy, guilt, and moral reasoning) on their ability to predict future delinquency. A meta-analysis was performed on studies in which participants were assessed on one or more of these components during late childhood, early adolescence, or middle adolescence and then evaluated several months to several years later for delinquency. The analyses showed that conscience, as measured by one or more of the three components, predicted lower levels of delinquency over time. Zero-order correlations were modest-to-moderate in size, whereas partial correlations, in which prior delinquency was controlled, were weak-to-modest but statistically significant. The results of this study support conscience and its components as instrumental in reducing and preventing delinquency in mid- to late adolescence.

The field of moral identity research comprises two different views as to when moral identity emerges in the course of development. While some describe moral identity as a developmental achievement of middle childhood, others maintain that it does not emerge before adolescence or early adulthood. The present paper bridges these views by introducing a new theoretical framework for conceptualizing moral identity development. Within this framework, moral identity is conceptualized as a goal, namely the goal to be a moral person. Children, adolescents and adults are all assumed to have this moral identity goal. Yet, its goal characteristics are expected to systematically change with development: from concrete to abstract, from externally to internally motivated, and from prevention- to promotion-oriented. From the age of responsibility to adult maturity, important changes are proposed in how the moral identity goal is represented and how it motivates moral action. By outlining these changes, the paper links early- and late-onset views of moral identity development and identifies avenues for future empirical research.

Few issues have garnered as much attention as that of understanding mechanisms of developmental change. Understanding mechanisms of developmental change is important because it allows researchers to go beyond studying at what age an ability emerges to understanding the processes by which those abilities develop in the first place. Despite the clear importance of mechanisms, the notion of a developmental mechanism or mechanism of developmental change remains largely undefined and there exists no clear guidance on how to study these mechanisms systematically in the developmental literature. Given these outstanding questions, this paper has two main aims. The first aim was to provide a clear definition for mechanism and a discussion about what is meant by development. I argue that the definition of mechanism that is provided better aligns with how most, if not all, developmental scientists think about them. The second goal was to provide concrete suggestions for how developmental scientists might study and test different kinds of mechanisms of developmental change. One of the main arguments of the paper is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to studying and testing mechanisms of developmental change and that how developmental researchers study them depends on key features of the mechanism in question.

Sensory regulation, the ability to select and process sensory information to plan and perform appropriate behaviours, provides a foundation for learning. From early in development, infants manifest differences in the strategies used for sensory regulation. Here, we discuss the nature and characteristics of sensory seeking, a key behavioural strategy for sensory regulation often described as atypical in children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders. We evaluate theoretical models proposed to clarify mechanisms underlying individual differences in sensory seeking and discuss evidence for/against each of these models. We conclude by arguing that the information prioritization hypothesis holds the greatest promise to illuminate the nature of individual differences in sensory seeking across participant cohorts. This proposal aligns to molecular genetic animal and human evidence, provides a coherent explanation for developmental findings, and generates testable hypotheses for future research.

Converging evidence suggests that traditional domain-general working memory (WM) training does not have reliable far-transfer effects, but produces reliable, modest near-transfer effects on structurally similar untrained tasks. Given the critical role of WM in academic development, WM training that incorporates task-specific features may maximize training effects on academic outcomes. In this theory paper, we discuss the training to emphasize the domain-specific function of WM highlighted by recent WM models. That is, WM should be better attuned to the materials being learned through enhancing strategies of linking together WM with the long-term memory knowledge, rather than only the enhancement of a “domain-general” attentional control overall. We provided two example training routes that emphasize explicit instruction and practice on WM-academic tasks (i.e., academic tasks that can be performed using a WM training paradigm) and task-linking strategies (i.e., strategies that can be used in both academic tasks and WM tasks to improve performance efficiency). We also review recent relevant intervention studies that are in line with this approach and report promising effects on academic outcomes. Implications for future studies are also discussed.

Racial/ethnic discrimination is a commonplace experience for many adolescents of color, and an increasing number of studies over the past 25 years have sought to document discrimination and its consequences at this stage of the life course. The evidence is clear and convincing that racial/ethnic discrimination is harmful for adolescents’ socioemotional and behavioral well-being as well as their academic success. Discrimination measurement, however, poses a critical source of potential variation in the observed effect sizes capturing the associations between racial/ethnic discrimination and adolescents’ well-being. This meta-analysis integrated 1,804 effect sizes on 156,030 unique ethnically- and geographically-diverse adolescents (M_age = 14.44, SD = 2.27) from 379 studies that used 79 unique instruments to assess racial/ethnic discrimination. The meta-analysis focused on a host of measurement-related moderators, including the number of items, response scale and response dimensions, reliability, retrospective reference period, perpetrators, and initial target populations. Larger effect sizes were observed for instruments with more items and with non-dichotomously rated items. Perpetrator and retrospective reference period also emerged as key moderators, while measure reliability, response dimensions, and initial measurement development characteristics were not significant moderators. Findings provide key insights for the development of more precise, effective instruments to assess perceived racial/ethnic discrimination in adolescence.

Being isolated from a group is associated with health risks, depressive symptomology, and increased risk-taking behaviors. A growing body of literature suggests that the way individual experiences isolation is a moderator of these negative health risks. How an individual perceives loneliness may be a product of one’s social environment: namely, an individual’s attachment style may indicate the extent to which he or she experiences feelings of loneliness. This is particularly relevant in the recent climate of social isolation due to COVID-19 restrictions and future pandemic response. The goal of this paper is to review and consolidate research in the domains of both loneliness and attachment and demonstrate how the two cyclically affect one another. We review the literature from a neurobiological point of view to explore the underlying bidirectional relationships between an individual’s genetics, neuroendocrine system, and neuroanatomy, and an individual’s attachment style with their primary caregiver. By examining animal models of loneliness and attachment we can see the behavioral and biological similarities between humans and animals, highlighting the importance of these types of studies. Finally, we summarize the current research and propose that the underlying biological systems of loneliness and attachment represent bidirectional, multigenerational, gene-environment interactions.

Questions about infants’ development of agency have been a topic of great interest for developmental psychology for many years. The central claim of our review is that agentic control is a necessary feature of minimal agency. We review influential experimental paradigms on infants’ agency which have predominantly focused on infants’ detection of multi-sensory contingencies (e.g., the mobile paradigm). We argue that these paradigms show infants’ ability to integrate multi-sensory information and learn reinforced movements, but do not test whether infants have agentic control over these movements. We further argue that, without a measure of agentic control, it cannot be conclusively shown whether the movements produced by infants reflect mere automatic responses or are indeed evidence of infants’controlled actions. Finally, based on the criterion of agentic control, we derive concrete experimental suggestions for a test of infants’ minimal agency.

Infant pointing has long been identified as an important precursor and predictor of language development. Infants typically begin to produce index finger pointing around the time of their first birthday and previous research has shown that both the onset and the frequency of pointing can predict aspects of productive and receptive language. The current study used a multivariate meta-analytic approach to estimate the strength of the relationship between infant pointing and language. We identified 30 papers published between 1984 and 2019 that met our stringent inclusion criteria, and 25 studies (comprising 77 effect sizes) with samples ≥10 were analysed. Methodological quality of the studies was assessed to identify potential sources of bias. We found a significant but small overall effect size of r = 0.20. Our findings indicate that the unique contribution of pointing to language development may be less robust than has been previously understood, however our stringent inclusion criteria (as well as our publication bias corrections), means that our data represent a more conservative estimate of the relationship between pointing and language. Moderator analysis showed significant group differences in favour of effect sizes related to language comprehension, non-vocabulary measures of language, pointing assessed after 18 months of age and pointing measured independent of speech. A significant strength of this study is the use of multivariate meta-analysis, which allowed us to utilise all available data to provide a more accurate estimate. We consider the findings in the context of the existing research and discuss the general limitations in this field, including the lack of cultural diversity.

The pernicious effects of poverty contribute to significant mental and physical health disparities. Though much research highlights coping as a means of interrupting stress processes, no review exists detailing how individuals across the lifespan cope with poverty-related stress (PRS). In this narrative review, we discuss the current knowledge of how children, adolescents, adults, and family units cope with PRS, and what coping strategies are related to positive mental and physical health outcomes in these contexts. Our findings indicate that direct, active coping is most often associated with positive outcomes, yet avenues for such agentic coping are scarcer in the context of poverty. Additionally, much qualitative literature revealed the many creative, resourceful, and non-traditional strategies adults and communities use to combat the stressors of poverty. Findings also underscore how the adaptive value of different coping strategies is often context dependent. We conclude that this scholarship can be greatly improved with research methodology that better examines causality and synthesizes effective quantitative and qualitative methods. These improvements, as well as increased incorporation of collective coping, will enhance important intervention research.