Developmental Psychology最新文献

Although the significance of teacher-student relationships for children's development has long been of interest to developmental scientists, few prior studies have used modeling approaches that explicitly document the intraindividual, dynamic processes that link teacher-student relationships with children's adjustment. The present study used bias-adjusted Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (Pianta, 2001) scores to document the within-person developmental processes that link teacher-student relationship quality with key developmental outcomes (including social competence, academic competence, and externalizing and internalizing symptoms) from kindergarten through Grade 6. Data were drawn from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1,041; 80.4% White, 12.9% Black, 6.1% Hispanic; 31.5% of mothers had a high school diploma or less). Within- and between-person bivariate associations were estimated using a series of latent curve models with structured residuals. Findings revealed consistent within-year associations with both school and home adjustment. Longitudinal findings suggested that within-person variations in teacher-student relationship quality are associated with subsequent academic functioning and externalizing symptoms. Furthermore, analyses suggested that social competence, academic competence, and externalizing symptoms are associated with subsequent teacher-student relationship quality. Results highlight the dynamic, bidirectional interactions between teacher-student relationships and children's social, academic, and behavioral trajectories over time. Future studies are needed to explore teacher-student relationships and adjustment at different timescales and to understand the extent to which teacher-student relationships are impactful for different students at various levels of developmental risk. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

During a lesson, children must pay attention to relevant information while they also have to ignore distractors. This study investigated attention in 36 neurotypical children (M = 8.5 years; 19 female, 17 male; 36 White) during the lesson with lesson-related decorations, with unrelated decorations, and with empty walls. Overt attention was recorded via eye-tracking glasses. Postlesson learning was measured directly after the lesson and 1 week later. Children looked more to the lesson-related compared with lesson-unrelated decorations, and more to the teacher when decorations were unrelated. Lesson learning was best with lesson-related decorations. Bayesian statistics confirmed similar learning scores between lesson-unrelated decorations and empty walls. This pattern of results was also observed a week later. Results indicate that successful attention control, which includes the ability to flexibly attend to lesson-relevant information in the learning environment, can boost learning in a classroom-like room. Irrelevant information did not impair learning in middle childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

The expression of intellectual humility-publicly admitting confusion, ignorance, and mistakes-can benefit individuals, but can it also benefit others? Five studies tested the hypothesis that teachers' expressions of intellectual humility would boost U.S. students' motivation and engagement in learning. In two pilot studies (one preregistered, combined N = 231), adults (50% women; 58% White, 25% Black) and adolescents (48% girls; 53% White, 33% Hispanic) anticipated being most comfortable expressing intellectual humility and interested in a hypothetical math class when a teacher's class description modeled the expression of intellectual humility relative to when the teacher recommended that students show intellectual humility or mentioned nothing about intellectual humility. Two fully powered, preregistered experiments with undergraduates (both 50% women; Study 3: 58% Asian, 17% Hispanic or Latinx, 16% White; Study 4: 53% White, 16% Asian, 16% Hispanic or Latinx; combined N = 767) replicated these effects and identified three mechanisms: an increase in a sense of acceptance by the teacher, an increase in the sense of belonging with peers, and a decrease in the belief that failure hurts learning. Study 5 (preregistered) revealed that high school students (51% girls; 92% White; N = 411) were more interested and engaged in their classes when they perceived their teachers to be more intellectually humble, with the largest benefits for young women. Longitudinally, teachers' modeling intellectual humility predicted changes in students' grades via a willingness to express intellectual humility. Teachers' intellectual humility may benefit students' interest, engagement, and learning in school. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Regulations and policy in early care and education (ECE) is based largely on the idea that structural elements of ECE, such as child-adult ratio, predict teacher-child interactions that then predict child developmental outcomes. This structure-process-outcome model was initially proposed when many states had minimal ECE quality standards. Our study tested the structure-process-outcome model using four large early childhood data sets that were collected over a 30-year period. Data from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n = 606, 24% non-White), the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study's Birth Cohort (n = 1,420, 56% non-White), the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey 2014 Cohort (n = 2,105, 76% non-White), and the University of North Carolina's Early Learning Network (n = 455, 75% non-White) were analyzed. Child-adult ratios and teachers' highest level of education were associated with measures of observed classroom quality during the historical period when there were minimal regulations and classroom ratios were higher and teacher education was lower; relations were not found when regulations required higher levels of structural quality. Notably, we also did not find significant relations between process quality measured by commonly used quality assessments and children's academic and behavioral outcomes in the preschool year. These findings suggest that as policies have improved structural quality, there is a need to refine the structure-process-outcome theoretical model. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Friends are often a source of emotional and informational support, which suggests that friends can directly assist adolescents to more effectively cope with stressful experiences, reducing emotional distress. In this longitudinal study, we examined the direct impact of friendship on adolescents' use of help seeking, comfort seeking, concealment, and rumination to cope with peer stressors. We used path modeling with two waves of data to consider the unique roles of friendship quality and coping on change in peer victimization (both overt and relational/reputational) and depression over time. Gender and age moderation were also examined. Participants were 619 Australian adolescents (M_age = 12.14) who experienced peer victimization in the past year and participated in two surveys over 1 year. In a comprehensive path model, higher quality friendship related to increased comfort-seeking responses to peer stress and decreased overt victimization over time. Regarding coping with peer stressors, comfort seeking was associated with fewer depressive symptoms over time, and concealment and rumination were associated with more overt and relational victimization, as well as increased depressive symptoms. Additionally, adolescents higher in overt victimization decreased help and comfort seeking over time, those higher in relational victimization increased comfort seeking, and those higher in depression increased concealment and rumination over time. Girls reported more problematic responses to peer stressors, and, although effects were small, gender and age moderated some longitudinal associations. Future research is needed to better understand how friendships may influence coping responses, with the aim of supporting adolescents to help each other cope with stress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Adolescence is a formative time for identity development. A key component of identity development involves weighing the explicit opinions of close others when forming one's preferences. Little is known about how more subtle forms of social input may influence adolescents' formation of their own preferences. In the present study, we used a novel social influence paradigm to assess shifts in adolescents' preferences after viewing implicitly delivered social influence cues provided from both an adolescent's mother and a real-life friend. In a sample of 100 adolescents (aged 10-17 years), recruited in 50 pairs of real-life friends and their mothers, we tested changes in adolescents' preferences after viewing supposed ratings from each partner. We also confirmed the validity of the novel task and evaluated the effects of individual differences (i.e., participant age, gender) and relationship quality separately with parents and peers on adolescents' preference changes. Results indicated that adolescents' preferences changed as a function of the source of influence (i.e., friend or mother) and endorsement status (i.e., endorsed or not endorsed) of the stimulus, whereby preference ratings increased to stimuli endorsed by friends relative to mothers. This effect was stronger for early versus middle adolescents and for adolescent girls compared to boys. Change in preferences was unrelated to relationship quality with either partner. Findings from this study provide insight into the features of social information that are relevant for adolescent identity development. Specifically, it pinpoints who has strong influence on which adolescents and what characteristics of ecologically based social information are influential. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

People spontaneously adjust their emotions to others when they interact. This temporal coupling of emotions is an adaptive process facilitating social bonding. The present study examined differences in coupling patterns during parent-child versus peer interactions in adolescence, a developmental period marked by evolving parent-child dynamics and bond formation with peers. Because adolescents prioritize peer bonding while gradually asserting their autonomy from parental influence, we hypothesized that peer dyads showed stronger coupling than parent-adolescent dyads. Adolescents (age 16) with diverse ethnic backgrounds (N = 615; 50.2% female; 46.8% European American, 31.2% African American, 5.0% Hispanic, 3.0% Asian or Pacific Islander, 2.0% Native American, and 12.0% multiple ethnic backgrounds) participated in two videotaped interaction tasks: one with a parent and one with a self-nominated peer. Parent and peer interactions included discussions on positive and negative topics. Both dyad members' emotions were coded in real time. Cross-recurrence quantification analyses and growth-curve modeling revealed concurrent emotion coupling patterns, with peer dyads showing stronger coupling than parent-adolescent dyads. Moreover, peer dyads showed the most pronounced coupling patterns when they discussed personal problems, while parent-adolescent dyads showed the most pronounced coupling patterns when they discussed the planning of a fun activity. Our findings emphasize the importance of microlevel emotion dynamics in understanding larger scale developmental shifts in relationships during adolescence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Friendships are fundamental to children's social and cognitive development. Previous research has shown that children understand the importance of various aspects of friendship, including prosocial behaviors. However, it is an open question whether children believe that prosocial behaviors should be reciprocated between friends. Across two experiments with 4- to 8-year-old participants (total N = 236), we examined how children weighed the importance of reciprocity and prosociality in friendship formation. Children were asked to predict which of two pairs-one in which both individuals provided prosocial behaviors (the reciprocal pair) and one in which only one individual provided prosocial behaviors (the nonreciprocal pair)-would become better friends. We found that younger children consistently favored the nonreciprocal pair, but with age, children became more likely to choose the reciprocal pair. By age 7, children reliably preferred the reciprocal pair, suggesting that they recognize the importance of reciprocity above and beyond prosociality in friendship formation. These findings shed new light on the theoretical debate on the role of reciprocity in friendship, and suggest that reciprocity may be an important component of children's mature concept of friendship. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Early parenthood is shaped by evolving parental behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and well-being embedded within biopsychosocial contexts. In this nationwide longitudinal study, we used latent growth curve modeling to examine how biopsychosocial vulnerability is associated with trajectories of parental experiences among new mothers and fathers during the first 2 years postpartum. Coresiding mothers (N = 2,994) and fathers (N = 2,787) across Canada self-reported various biopsychosocial vulnerabilities (e.g., lower couple relationship quality, lower perceived social support) at a single time point, with most factors collected at 3 weeks postpartum and others at 3 months postpartum. Parents further reported on parental outcomes (e.g., involvement, distress, overreactivity) starting at 3 months postpartum for up to five time points across the first 2 years postpartum. Results showed that vulnerability factors had the strongest and most frequent associations with initial status in parental outcomes, with lower relationship quality and lower perceived social support having the largest effect sizes. These patterns were similar for both mothers and fathers. In contrast, the number and strength of associations with change in parental outcomes over time was smaller. While lower relationship quality and perceived social support were linked to improvements in some parental outcomes over time, high childhood adversity, immigrant background, lower household income, and lower education were associated with less favorable changes in outcomes. These patterns varied between mothers and fathers. Overall, the findings underscore the contribution of biopsychosocial vulnerability in the functioning and well-being of first-time parents, with shared and unique risks for mothers and fathers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

One of the most pervasive human interests is the acquisition of norms surrounding fairness-young children care about equality, enforce it in their behavior, and punish those who do not behave accordingly. Although the fact that children care about fairness is well documented, less is understood about the types of fairness norms that children endorse. In this work, across two studies with preschool-aged children (ages 2.5-6; N = 123), we document a developmental shift toward precision in sharing norms, both in rejecting extreme inequalities (i.e., giving none) and increased endorsement of exact equality (distributing exactly equal amounts). Children's symbolic counting skills (i.e., acquisition of the cardinal principle) predicted this shift across two studies, even when accounting for approximate number acuity and symbolic and nonsymbolic understanding of null sets, although this effect emerged only for children's tolerance of selfish sharing-most forms of generous sharing were tolerated regardless of numerical abilities. Our results suggest a developmental shift from an abstract notion of learning to an increasingly precise notion of equality as children acquire symbolic counting skills. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).