Developmental Review最新文献

As adults, we draw upon our ample knowledge about the world to support such vital cognitive feats as using language, reasoning, retrieving knowledge relevant to our current goals, planning for the future, adapting to unexpected events, and navigating through the environment. Our knowledge readily supports these feats because it is not merely a collection of stored facts, but rather functions as an organized, semantic network of concepts connected by meaningful relations. How do the relations that fundamentally organize semantic concepts emerge with development? Here, we cast a spotlight on a potentially powerful but often overlooked driver of semantic organization: Rich statistical regularities that are ubiquitous in both language and visual input. In this synthetic review, we show that a driving role for statistical regularities is convergently supported by evidence from diverse fields, including computational modeling, statistical learning, and semantic development. Finally, we identify a number of key avenues of future research into how statistical regularities may drive the development of semantic organization.

Strong foundational skills in mathematical problem solving, acquired in early childhood, are critical not only for success in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) fields but also for quantitative reasoning in everyday life. The acquisition of mathematical skills relies on protracted interactive specialization of functional brain networks across development. Using a systems neuroscience approach, this review synthesizes emerging perspectives on neurodevelopmental pathways of mathematical learning, highlighting the functional brain architecture that supports these processes and sources of heterogeneity in mathematical skill acquisition. We identify the core neural building blocks of numerical cognition, anchored in the posterior parietal and ventral temporal-occipital cortices, and describe how memory and cognitive control systems, anchored in the medial temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex, help scaffold mathematical skill development. We highlight how interactive specialization of functional circuits influences mathematical learning across different stages of development. Functional and structural brain integrity and plasticity associated with math learning can be examined using an individual differences approach to better understand sources of heterogeneity in learning, including cognitive, affective, motivational, and sociocultural factors. Our review emphasizes the dynamic role of neurodevelopmental processes in mathematical learning and cognitive development more generally.

Previous research highlighted that prejudice is already formed in early childhood, reaches a peak in middle childhood, and slightly decreases in late childhood, whereas the development of prejudice in adolescence was mostly unknown. This systematic review with meta-analysis aimed to comprehensively summarize and integrate prior longitudinal research on adolescents’ prejudice to address two main research questions: (a) how does prejudice develop in adolescence? (b) which factors are related to holding prejudicial attitudes in adolescence? Using multiple search strategies and applying a two-step selection process, a final set of 26 journal articles including a total of 30 samples (N = 23,513 participants) was found to match eligibility criteria and, thus, was included in the review. The meta-analytic findings highlighted that (a) prejudice does not change in adolescence; (b) interindividual differences in prejudice are well-established, they become increasingly strong with age, and they are inversely related to the time-lag between assessments; and (c) several individual, identity, and contextual factors are related to prejudice in different ways. More specifically, social dominance orientation, intergroup anxiety, identification with the national ingroup, and parental prejudice contributed to increasing later levels of adolescents’ prejudice, whereas intergroup friendship contributed to lessening it. Importantly, prejudice had comparable reverse effects on these factors, pointing to consistent bidirectional associations. These main findings are discussed considering their implications for future research and practice.

Various lines of research suggest that parental mind-mindedness can facilitate children’s cognitive and social growth (e.g., executive functions and social cognition) in addition to improving parent-child relationships (i.e., attachments). The current research investigated the stability of the relationship between parental mind-mindedness and children’s developmental capacities by conducting a meta-analysis of 42 studies with 170 comparisons. Random effects analyses from the 170 comparisons revealed a modest positive mean effect size (r = 0.14), 95% CI [0.11, 0.16]. Next, the meta-analysis investigated three sets of potential moderators (sample characteristics, methodology, and publication factors) which led to 12 potential moderators in total. Of the 12, developmental capacity domain, children’s ages, mind-mindedness coding, mind-mindedness scoring, and research group were the five found to moderate the strength of the correlation. Parental mind-mindedness (coded for in regard to appropriate mind-related comments and/or mental attributes/comments) most strongly correlates with children’s executive functions, language abilities, and social cognition, and yields the strongest correlations when assessed during toddlerhood. Other analyses revealed that scoring parental mind-mindedness using the proportions of mind-minded utterances within speech is likely a conservative best practice, and that additional data from research groups is needed to ensure the stability of replications. We conclude with summaries of the literature’s quantitative findings currently and what that indicates about where subsequent investigations might focus.

Social connectedness (SC), as a sense of belonging and a psychological bond a person may feel towards other people or groups, is imperative for the positive mental and physical development of children and early adolescents. Particularly children and early adolescents with a mental disorder often face difficulties feeling socially connected and experience the detrimental effects of loneliness. The present systematic review aims to investigate how far SC differs in children and early adolescents with a mental disorder compared to in those that develop neurotypically. Furthermore, it aims to examine the determinants of SC and predominant SC measurement techniques applied in youth with a mental disorder. Following a systematic PRISMA approach, 33 studies were included. In the majority of studies, SC was reduced in the affected population, with varying manifestations over different diagnoses. Determinants could be divided into skills, behavioral and social aspects, and symptoms. Various measurement techniques were applied, exploring friendship quality, loneliness, and peer relations along several dimensions. Interventions and possibilities of influencing SC in certain disorders seems possible and necessary to bring SC more into the focus of daily clinical routine and prevent adverse outcomes in this vulnerable population.

Temperamental Behavioral Inhibition (BI) is a well-documented risk factor for social anxiety in development. However, not all BI children will ultimately demonstrate anxious symptomology. Levels of inhibitory control have been proposed as a possible risk or protective factor for these children, but research remains mixed on whether higher levels of inhibitory control may increase or decrease risk in development. However, the idea of elevated inhibitory control as a risk factor for maladaptation is often considered incongruent with prior conceptions of advantages conferred by proficient inhibitory control. Here, we review theories pertaining to greater inhibitory control as a risk factor for BI children. We also review how individual differences in dopaminergic activity may link BI, executive functioning, and anxiety both concurrently and longitudinally, explaining these nonlinear relations. By way of these associations, we propose a model examining how transactions between these dopamine- modulated domains over time may predict socioemotional adaptation or maladaptation, and discuss how spontaneous eye blink rate may allow for the developmentally-friendly testing of cognitive and socioemotional associations with dopaminergic activity across different forms of experimental design.

Contingent interactions between caregivers and infants, in which caregivers respond promptly and meaningfully to infants’ behaviors, lay a foundation for language learning. Three pathways have been proposed for how contingent interactions promote the development of language skills: temporal, semantic, and pragmatic. Here, we argue that these pathways act through a reciprocal relation between infant attention and contingent interactions. We present evidence that attention facilitates contingent interactions to help infants understand communicative intent and, in turn, contingent interactions promote attention to allow infants to better learn from the language directed to them. This new framework suggests that contingent interactions operate through domain-general skills, thereby establishing a foundation for learning more broadly.

There are extensive controversies about: (1) whether any gender differences in math exist, (2) what factors might contribute to any gender differences, and (3) whether gender differences in abilities and attitudes are likely to impact the substantially smaller number of women in math intensive Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. We provide a review of gender differences in math, describing the inconsistencies and disagreements in the literature, which we propose can often be tied to the population being studied or to features relating to the math measures being used. Then we address two potential areas of gender differences (spatial skills and math attitudes), which may be critical in influencing gender differences in math within certain populations and types of math skills. Next, this article compares key gender-math theories, analyzing them from a bio-psycho-social framework. These findings are discussed within the context of our bio-psycho-social theory of gender differences in both math skills and STEM fields. In an overview of our bio-psycho-social theory, we propose that it is relative tilt in patterns of brain organization relating to spatial versus verbal abilities (rather than math versus verbal abilities tilt) that leads to gender differences in math behaviors and attitudes. This relative spatial-verbal tilt is likely a key player in influencing math skills/careers. At the end of the article, the educational implications are addressed including implications for interventions.

To advance our understanding of how emotional experience changes across the adult life span, we propose an integrative theoretical framework: the appraisal approach to aging and emotion (AAAE). AAAE posits that (a) age-related cognitive, motivational, and physical changes fundamentally change the appraisal system in certain ways, and that (b) older adults often deploy appraisal processes in different ways relative to their younger counterparts. As such, we hypothesize that these age-related changes to the appraisal process underlie the finding that older and younger adults tend to experience different emotions. In this paper we integrate findings from the aging literature with appraisal theory, grounding AAAE in theoretical and empirical work relevant to the relationship between aging and appraisal processes. Using our theoretical framework, it is possible to identify critical points of investigation for aging and emotion researchers to further develop our understanding of the proximal-level determinants of age differences in emotion.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is among the most prevalent causes of disability and death in childhood and adolescence. Although adolescents are commonly lumped in with either children or adults, their injury patterns, symptoms, and outcomes significantly differ from both groups and the effects of TBI during this period should be studied and treated as distinct. This review highlights these distinctions by demonstrating how adolescence differs from other developmental stages and how outcomes of all TBI severities during this phase contrast with those of children and adults. Within this framework, the review highlights three key points. First, adolescence represents a high-risk period for acquiring a TBI (mild, moderate, or severe). Second, adolescents do not respond and recover from these injuries in the same manner as young children or adults. Finally, there are significant gaps in the literature regarding adolescent neuropathology and most specifically the neuroinflammatory response in the adolescent brain, as well as relationships of these factors to cognitive, social, and emotional factors and decision making in adolescence, all of which contribute to risks and recovery from TBI. Future research should comprehensively characterize causal mechanisms ranging from neuropathophysiology, including neuroinflammatory processes, to social and psychological processes associated with adolescent TBI across the spectrum (mild to severe), as this may provide innovative pathways toward effective preventative and therapeutic strategies.