Developmental Review最新文献

In interpersonal models of developmental psychopathology, friendships and affiliations with peers have been considered as both consequences and determinants of children’s and adolescents’ internalizing behaviors and peer victimization. Longitudinal stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOMs) allow developmental researchers to disentangle peer selection processes where children or adolescents choose friends who are similar to themselves in internalizing behaviors or peer victimization from peer influence processes where children or adolescents become more similar to their friends over time in internalizing behaviors or peer victimization. This paper highlights the methods and results from a systematic review that screened 1447 empirical articles and located 28 using SAOMs to understand the interplay between peer social networks and internalizing behaviors or peer victimization. The results provide some evidence for both peer selection and influence related to depression, social anxiety, and peer victimization. Additionally, the results provide insight into directions for additional substantive and methodological research. Based on the findings of this review, future research is recommended that considers specific tests of peer selection and influence mechanisms, developmental and gender differences, individual and contextual moderators, multiplex relationships, methodological quality, and direct replication of prior studies.

Theory of Mind (ToM) is one of the core abilities that allows children to connect socially with others and to consider others’ perspectives. Historically, most research on ToM development has focused on early childhood, but recent years have seen an increased focus on how children build this critical social understanding beyond the preschool timeframe. Given this burgeoning literature, we have identified and organized findings across a variety of domains of development to provide a cohesive theoretical framework depicting the correlates and antecedents of ToM development throughout middle childhood and adolescence. Thus, the present paper provides a synthesis and narrative review of the research to yield insights into important ways in which often-disparate lines of study (e.g., brain specialization, relational aggression, reading comprehension) relate to ToM and bidirectionally influence one another in the developing child. Specifically, we focused our analysis of the literature on identifying neural networks underlying ToM, the roles of executive function and emotional self-regulation on ToM, the socioemotional correlates of ToM, and relations between ToM and academic performance. We also provide a brief discussion of studies recognizing sociocultural, linguistic, and contextual influences on ToM. Our review provides evidence for both common and distinct processes and corollaries with age across these disparate literatures, with significant research indicating the important role of mediating and moderating processes when considering how advanced ToM impacts development. We end by proposing a theoretical, integrative framework and discussing the future directions for the field, including testable predictions generated by the framework that span often-disparate domains of inquiry.

Recent research has shown that preschool children tend to preferentially allocate resources to rich than to poor others. The findings that young children tend to perpetuate inequalities are puzzling given classical developmental theories that largely focused on the emergence of equality and equity in childhood. In this review, we first sketch the early ontogeny of fairness concerns before providing an overview on studies reporting perpetuation of inequality in young children. We review four classical theories (Piaget, Kohlberg, Damon, Social Domain Theory) and discuss how they would account for this phenomenon. We then introduce four recent theoretical models that directly speak to the underlying psychological processes; the affective preference model, the reciprocity-based strategic model, the numerical matching model, and the normative model. We highlight the key tenets of each model, their relation to other developmental processes, and the strength of the empirical evidence. From each model, we derive specific hypotheses. Finally, in an integrative section we discuss how the models might relate to each other, highlight connections to other research areas, and present avenues for future research.

Many psychological constructs show heterotypic continuity—their behavioral manifestations change with development but their meaning remains the same (e.g., externalizing problems). However, research has paid little attention to how to account for heterotypic continuity. Conceptual and methodological challenges of heterotypic continuity may prevent researchers from examining lengthy developmental spans. Developmental theory requires that measurement accommodate changes in manifestation of constructs. Simulation and empirical work demonstrate that failure to account for heterotypic continuity when collecting or analyzing longitudinal data results in faulty developmental inferences. Accounting for heterotypic continuity may require using different measures across time with approaches that link measures on a comparable scale. Creating a developmental scale (i.e., developmental scaling) is recommended to link measures across time and account for heterotypic continuity, which is crucial in understanding development across the lifespan. The current synthesized review defines heterotypic continuity, describes how to identify it, and presents solutions to account for it. We note challenges of addressing heterotypic continuity, and propose steps in leveraging opportunities it creates to advance empirical study of development.

Maternal internalizing symptoms during pregnancy, specifically depression and/or anxiety, are commonly linked to negative affectivity (NA) in infant offspring. These links are commonly attributed to biological effects of the in utero environment on fetal development. However, research suggests that internalizing symptoms before and after pregnancy, as well as in fathers, may also be associated with NA in infant offspring. Such findings suggest greater complexity in transmission than can be explained by biological in utero programming alone. Further, infant NA is often treated as an homogenous construct, yet it covers a range of facets including fear, frustration, sadness, and slow recovery from distress that may each be differentially associated with parent internalizing distress. Here we aimed to (1) meta-analytically quantify associations between maternal and paternal internalizing symptoms and infant offspring NA, (2) examine how associations varied as a function of distinct phenotypic facets of NA, and (3) examine how associations varied by timing of parental symptoms (preconception, antenatal, postnatal) and infant age. Using random-effects meta-analysis, we found that maternal internalizing symptoms were positively associated with infant NA (r = 0.17 [95% CI 0.14, 0.21], 42 studies, 149 estimates). Preliminary evidence from studies of fathers likewise suggested a positive association with infant NA (r = 0.13 [95% CI 0.04, 0.22], 6 studies, 40 estimates). We observed associations with the global infant NA construct, as well as effect modification by infant NA facet (maternal r range 0.12–0.22; paternal r range 0.03–0.21). In mothers, there was no evidence of effect modification by timing of internalizing symptoms or infant age; in fathers, preliminary associations were larger for postnatal than antenatal symptoms. Further studies of preconception and paternal symptoms are now needed, and we suggest avenues for research to advance understanding of the relations between parent internalizing symptoms and infant NA.

Early language environment plays a critical role in child language development. The Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA™) system allows researchers and clinicians to collect daylong recordings and obtain automated measures to characterize a child’s language environment. This meta-analysis evaluates the predictability of LENA’s automated measures for language skills in young children. We systematically searched reports for associations between LENA’s automated measures, specifically, adult word count (AWC), conversational turn count (CTC), and child vocalization count (CVC), and language skills in children younger than 48 months. Using robust variance estimation, we calculated weighted mean effect sizes and conducted moderator analyses exploring the factors that might affect this relationship. The results revealed an overall medium effect size for the correlation between LENA’s automated measures and language skills. This relationship was largely consistent regardless of child developmental status, publication status, language assessment modality and method, or the age at which the LENA recording was taken; however, the effect was moderated by the gap between LENA recordings and language measures taken. Among the three measures, there were medium associations between CTC and CVC and language, whereas there was a small-to-medium association between AWC and language. These findings extend beyond validation work conducted by the LENA Research Foundation and suggest certain predictive strength of LENA’s automated measures for child language. We discussed possible mechanisms underlying the observed associations, as well as the theoretical, methodological, and clinical implications of these findings.

Parent-child play interactions in the first years of life are linked to more positive cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes for children. The vast majority of previous research has focussed on mother-infant play interactions, but the potential positive role of fathers’ early involvement in children’s lives is being increasingly recognised, with higher levels of caregiving by fathers in many countries. To characterise the nature and potential impact of father-child play we undertook a systematic review of the published literature in psychological and educational databases up until 2018. We focussed on studies addressing the frequency and characteristics of fathers’ play with children (aged 0–3 years), and the potential impact on children’s development. We screened 436 articles, yielding 78 papers addressing the questions of interest. There are 3 key findings. First, fathers spend a significant proportion of their time with their children engaging in playful interactions, often in the form of physical play such as rough and tumble. Second, whilst findings are mixed, on balance the evidence suggests that fathers’ play frequency increases from infancy to preschool age with a subsequent decline in play as children reach early- middle childhood. Third, studies investigating links between fathers’ play and child outcomes suggest that fathers’ play in the early years can positively contribute to children’s social, emotional and cognitive outcomes. This potential for substantial benefit for children provides a clear imperative for policy makers and practitioners to facilitate and support fathers, as well as mothers, in developing more positive and playful interactions with their infants.

There is wide individual, social, and cultural variation in experiences afforded to young children, yet current evidence suggests there is little variation in phonological outcomes in the first year of life. This paper provides a classification of phonological acquisition theories, revealing that few of them predict no variation in phonological acquisition outcomes, and thus are plausible in view of observed patterns: Only theories with strong priors and informational filters, and where phonological acquisition does not depend on lexical development, are compatible with great variation in early language experiences resulting in minimal or no outcome variation. The approach is then extended to consider proposals contemplating acquisition of other linguistic levels, including joint learning frameworks, and testable predictions are drawn for the acquisition of morphosyntax and vocabulary.