Developmental Review最新文献

Theory of mind (ToM) is a developmental and multidimensional ability to impute mental states to oneself and others. This systematic review aimed to identify and appraise the current ToM measures for children in terms of their constructs, modes of presentation and response, the test theories adopted to develop them, and psychometric properties. Among the 588 articles retrieved, 127 ToM measures were identified. Twelve measures covered the full spectrum of ToM development in childhood. Only four measures had items in all construct dimensions (i.e., cognitive–interpersonal, cognitive–intrapersonal, affective–interpersonal, and affective–intrapersonal ToM), but they were not designed with specific items on developmental components in every dimension. As regards modes of presentation and response, twenty-one measures designed with visual aids are recommended for children with poor verbal comprehension and expression abilities. Only six measures were constructed or examined with Rasch modeling to better quantify ToM ability. To sum up, currently, no single ToM measure constructed with Rasch modeling and featuring visual aids can assess children’s ToM ability simultaneously and specifically with the multidimensional construct. A thorough ToM measurement for children with the above-mentioned characteristics is warranted for clinicians and researchers to better understand children’s ToM ability and examine the mechanisms governing the developmental and multidimensional constructs.

Delinquency shows an increase in adolescence and is hence often cited as a behaviour explainable in terms of adolescent risk-taking models. In this review we summarise contemporary developmental models of adolescent risk-taking as they apply to delinquency and evaluate the extent to which they are supported by empirical evidence. Dual Systems theory, Fuzzy Trace Theory, the Lifespan Wisdom Model (LWM), and the Developmental Neuro-Ecological Risk-taking Model (DNERM) are all discussed. We highlight that there have been very few direct empirical evaluations of developmental risk-taking models as applied to delinquency; however, indirect evidence supports the core Dual Systems theory claim that a developmental imbalance between sensation-seeking and self-regulation contributes to an adolescent peak in offending. However, this appears to apply particularly to a sub-group of vulnerable youth, as implied by the LWM. Further, risk-taking propensity likely interacts with age-related changes in exposure to risk-conducive situations, as implied by DNERM. There is little evidence to suggest that Fuzzy Trace Theory alone explains developmental changes in risk-taking, though it may help explain how young people learn about risk, as outlined in LWM, Better integration of risk-taking models with criminological perspectives as well as further longitudinal research using appropriate operationalisations of developmental imbalance, modelling individual differences in trajectories, and incorporating measures of exposure to risk-conducive situations will be essential for advancing knowledge of the drivers of engagement in delinquency in adolescence.

Comprehensive meta-analyses of risky decision making in children, adolescents, and adults have revealed that age trends in disambiguated laboratory tasks confirmed fuzzy-trace theory’s prediction that preference for risk decreases monotonically from childhood to adulthood. These findings are contrary to predictions of dual systems or neurobiological imbalance models. Assumptions about increasing developmental reliance on mental representations of the gist of risky options are essential to account for this developmental trend. However, dual systems theory appropriately emphasizes how cultural context changes behavioral manifestation of risk preferences across age and neurobiological imbalance models appropriately emphasize developmental changes in reward sensitivity. All of the major theories include the assumption of increasing behavioral inhibition. Here, we integrate these theoretical constructs—representation, cultural context, reward sensitivity, and behavioral inhibition—to provide a novel framework for understanding and improving risky decision making in youth. We also discuss the roles of critical tests, scientific falsification, disambiguating assessments of psychological and neurological processes, and the misuse of such concepts as ecological validity and reverse inference. We illustrate these concepts by extending fuzzy-trace theory to explain why youth are a major conduit of viral infections, including the virus that causes COVID-19. We conclude by encouraging behavioral scientists to embrace new ways of thinking about risky decision making that go beyond traditional stereotypes about adolescents and that go beyond conceptualizing ideal decision making as trading off degrees of risk and reward.

This paper poses a novel theoretical framework for a developmentally-informed mechanism explaining how adolescents who are highly sensitive and reactive to rejection may respond to interpersonal stress in ways that ultimately perpetuate relational difficulties. Specifically, heightened distress from rejection is proposed to activate impulsive reactions that immediately modulate the negative emotions from rejection, but which are socially aversive and thus often come at the expense of long-term relational harmony. We start by exploring the overlap of two dispositions: a hyper-sensitivity to rejection and an escalated reactivity to negative affect. We then trace distal factors underlying the development of both dispositions, the mechanisms through which the convergent effects of these dispositions produce socially aversive responses, and the individual and contextual differences that influence this process and explain the continuum of rash responses to rejection. The developmental and clinical importance of considering sensitivity and reactivity to rejection concurrently is emphasized, with directions for future research.

In this review, we describe multiple pathways that may lead to risk-taking in adolescence. We review behavioral and neuroimaging studies showing heightened risk-taking tendencies and associated neural reward activity in mid to late adolescence, but evidence points to risk taking as highly context and sample dependent. Here, we suggest that individual differences, specifically reward drive, may be a differential susceptibility factor that shows heightened sensitivity in adolescents and that makes some adolescents more sensitive to their environment. Furthermore, we review evidence that an elevated reward drive in mid-adolescence in interaction with prosocial and cognitive development can lead to various trajectories of risk taking. In this review we propose to extend existing models with individual-difference factors, specifically reward drive, and accompanying developmental processes, including cognitive control and prosocial development, that drive the development of multiple pathways of risk taking.

Empathy reflects the ability to perceive and be sensitive to the emotional states of others, often eliciting a motivation to care for their well-being. It plays a central role in prosocial behavior and inhibition of aggression. While the development of empathy has traditionally been examined with behavioral and observational methods, a growing body of work in neuroscience using eye-tracking, functional MRI, electroencephalography, electromyography and near-infrared spectroscopy, casts new light on the neurobiological mechanisms involved in the capacity to connect with one another and share their subjective states. This article selectively reviews and critically examines the current knowledge on the developmental neuroscience of empathy in early childhood. Deconstructing empathy into functional components such as sensitivity to signals of distress, emotion sharing, perspective taking, and caring for others within the framework of natural sciences, in conjunction with examining their developmental trajectory in early childhood is beneficial to research and theory with implication for psychopathology. This developmental neuroscience perspective advances our understanding of empathy, its underlying mechanisms, and functions.

The relation of various math attitudes to math achievement has been extensively studied in adolescents and adults. Recently, researchers have begun to examine the math attitude-math achievement relation in young children. We review theories and research on four attitudes relevant to early math learning—math anxiety, math self-concept, mindset, and math-gender stereotype. These attitudes emerge and are related to math achievement by early elementary school. Our review suggests that early math achievement plays an important role in the initial development of either positive or negative math attitudes, which in turn, may initiate a vicious or virtuous cycle that can enhance or undermine math learning. Additionally, gender differences in math attitudes (favoring boys) emerge by early to mid-elementary school. An important future direction involves understanding how early attitudes about math relate to each other, and whether certain constellations of attitudes are prevalent. We also consider three types of math attitudes that key socializers—parents and teachers—hold: general (math-gender stereotypes and mindsets), self-relevant (math anxiety), and child-specific (expectations and value of math for their child or student). Our review highlights a link between key socializers’ math attitudes and associated behaviors, and their children’s math attitudes and math achievement. Based on these findings, we propose the Early Math Achievement-Attitude model (EMAA). An important future direction involves increasing our understanding of how key socializers with different math attitude constellations engage with children around math. Finally, based on our review of these topics as well as intervention studies, we discuss intervention approaches that hold promise for improving young children’s math achievement and math attitudes.

Popular culture often portrays adolescence as a period of peak risk-taking, but that developmental trend is not consistently found across laboratory studies. Instead, meta-analytic evidence shows that while adolescents take more risks compared to adults, children and adolescents actually take similar levels of risk. Furthermore, developmental trajectories vary across different measures of laboratory decision making and everyday risky behavior. Indeed, the psychological concept of “risk” is multifactorial, such that its different factors exhibit different developmental trajectories. Here, we examine how economic risk preference, or the propensity to gamble on uncertain outcomes with known probabilities, is distinct from economic ambiguity preference, or the propensity to gamble on uncertain outcomes with unknown probabilities -- and how economic risk and ambiguity may differentially influence adolescent decision making. Economic ambiguity engages distinct neural mechanisms from economic risk – both in adults and adolescents – and differentially relates to everyday risk-taking. However, to date, it remains elusive how economic ambiguity aversion develops across adolescence, as the relative paucity of such work limits the conclusions that can be drawn. We propose that developmental research into adolescent decision making should consider economic ambiguity as a distinct component within the multifactorial construct of adolescent risk-taking. This will set the stage for future work on economic ambiguity preferences as an explanatory mechanism for behaviors beyond risk taking, such as learning and prosocial behavior.